


Starved

by vannes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean, Body Worship, Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi, Past Cassie Robinson/Charlie, Past Cassie Robinson/Dean Winchester, Self Confidence Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, Touch-Starved Castiel, briefly mentioned only!!!, buckle up kiddos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:51:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5925775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vannes/pseuds/vannes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean doesn't know what he expects when he picks up a homeless teenager and takes him home during the heaviest storm of the winter, but this isn't it. Castiel is quiet, shy, and refuses to let Dean touch him, but still somehow manages to worm his way into his heart in the short weeks they spend together. It doesn't take long for Castiel to become an intrinsic part of his life and happiness, and by the time Castiel has lived with him for most of the winter, Dean isn't sure he'll ever be able to let go. Of course, Cas's refusal to talk about his past and his seeming fear of even the most casual touches drives a wedge between them, and Dean may be forced to admit that letting Castiel go might be the only way to leave them both intact.</p><p>INDEFINITE HIATUS</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The winters in Chicago are ruthless and freezing. People rush to and from cars and buildings, desperate to stay out of the ruthless wind and snow. Dean’s rushing down the sidewalk like everyone else, minding his own business and squinting to keep the snow out of his eyes when he hears it. From the alley behind him, the sharp, unmistakeable slap of skin on skin. He stops in his tracks instinctively, and at the sound of muffled yelling coming from behind him, Dean turns on his heel and strides into the alley.

The scene he’s greeted with isn’t necessarily surprising, but Dean’s dismayed nonetheless. There’s a kid on the ground, kneeling in a puddle of half-melted snow, a red handprint quickly reddening on his bare face. The man in front of him has his back to Dean and seems to be fiddling with the front of his pants. Before he really stops to think, Dean clears his throat loudly.

“Chicago PD!” He announces, and the guy standing up scrambles, nearly slipping on a patch of ice as he bolts down the alley, away from Dean, hiking his slipping pants up as he goes. The kid, who Dean notices can’t be more than twenty, starts similarly, his bare fingers sliding in the slush as he pushes himself up and tries to run, revealing the damp stains on his threadbare jeans. He doesn’t make it far, even though Dean doesn’t follow him; the kid actually does slip on a patch of ice and stumbles into one of the garbage cans of the business lining the alley. Dean watches as the fight leaves him and the kid slumps to the ground, then approaches slowly, offering out a hand. The kid doesn’t take it, looking at Dean warily, like he’s expecting to get arrested.

“Hey, I’m not actually a cop,” Dean reveals, hoping that this will do something to assuage the kid’s fear. It has the opposite affect, however, and the boy’s expression changes from apprehension to something like bitterness. He doesn’t deign Dean with a response, and doesn’t take the offered hand, choosing instead to shove himself up unsteady, revealing the frozen redness of his palms and knees where his jeans have worn through. Dean stands there, dumbfounded when he really takes in the extent to which the kid is dressed.

He’s wearing _ripped jeans_ , for one, and a jacket that looks about ten years old and two sizes too small. The kid’s hands are completely bare as he tugs the jacket closed over his tight shirt, because of course the zipper’s busted. It’s the height of winter, a storm’s about to blow into the city, and the kid isn’t wearing socks.

“What do you want?” He asks, like he knows the answer and is just waiting for Dean to say it. Dean’s confused, until he remembers just _why_ the kid’s jeans are soaked from knee to ankle, and he feels bile rising in his throat.

“Nothing!” He protests immediately, offended for a reason he can’t really place. The boy shoots him a scorning look then turns as if to leave, the handprint bright pink on his cheek.

“Then leave me alone.” He starts to walk off, and Dean gets a glimpse at a hole in the sole of one of his shoes before he calls out again, fumbling for his wallet.

“Wait—take this.” Dean’s not really one for charity; he’d grown up in a household where every dollar had to be stretched to its most extreme limit, and even now that he’s living more than comfortably, the though of giving away money is an uncomfortable concept. But he extends a fifty dollar bill towards the kid, who studies him with weary eyes before reaching out and taking it. His fingers don’t brush Dean’s, and he turns and walks away without even a “thank you”.  

Castiel has holes in his pockets. He’s been wearing the same coat for the last three years, and the pockets have had holes since he bought it secondhand. The cold seeps through them, leaving his fingers creaking and numb when he’s sitting under an awning in an alley, or on the steps of a food kitchen that doesn’t open till six, or when he’s standing on a streetcorner hoping that someone thinks he’s pretty enough to spend a couple bucks on. If the winter gets any worse, Castiel knows he’ll freeze. 

He uses the fifty dollars to buy a pair of cheap gloves and a night in a motel room. The night after that, he’s back on the street and gets approached by two men, two men who reach out for him and laugh when he flinches away. Castiel is cheap, he’s easy, and he has to stop himself from throwing up every time his fingers or lips brush skin. When the second man leaves, zipping up his pants without a word and meandering back to his car, Castiel does throw up, in the dumpster behind a bakery. He settles down next to it, tucked into the corner where there’s less snow, and curls up into a ball.

It’s only been a year. It feels like longer. For a long time, Castiel had lived in motels, cheap places that he could live in off his meagre savings while he looked for a job, but the money had run out fast, and no one wanted to hire a homeless eighteen year old. So now he sleeps in homeless shelters and back alleys, because on nights like these the shelters are full to bursting, and every time Castiel approaches one he sees the little kids and the pregnant women and everyone else, and he knows they need the warmth more than he does.

When it starts to snow again, Castiel wakes up shivering. He’s always shivering nowadays, it feels like. Even in the middle of the day it’s still below freezing. He tries to stand up, but his legs are shaking too badly to support him and he collapses back against the brick wall, the hard surface knocking the wind out of him.

_This could be it_ , he thinks. Castiel wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to go home, but all he’s left with now is his old jacket and thirty dollars in his pocket. It’s enough for a warm meal, maybe a new pair of socks, but in this weather no one’s going to want to leave their house or their job, which means the money has to last until the storm lets up. At least behind the dumpster Castiel is protected from the wind, which howls down the alley and prevents him from getting any more sleep. It’s pitch dark, which means that it could be midnight or seven A.M., and Castiel has no idea how long he’s slept.

Eventually, he makes his way to his feet again, his fingers and toes and everything frozen, and stumbles to the end of the alley. There’s a 24 hour diner across the street, the lights muted by the snow, and Castiel makes his frozen way to the door, leaning heavily against it to get it to budge. He steps into the building and sighs when the blast of heat hits him, but he doesn’t stop shaking until he’s sitting in a booth, knees drawn up to his chest and his wallet out on the table in front of him. No matter how cold he is, he’s not allowed to be in here unless he’s buying something, so when the waitress comes over, a dull smile plastered on her face, Castiel orders coffee and a bowl of soup. 

“You know, there’s a shelter a couple’a blocks over,” the waitress says kindly. She has to be in her forties, her hair graying at the temples. She probably has kids at home, Castiel thinks. She probably comes home after her shifts and kisses her kids goodnight, Castiel thinks.

“It’s full,” he says quietly, because it is. She gives him a pitying look—and that’s what he hates the most. He doesn’t want her pity, but he knows how he looks, soaked through to the bone, skinny, helpless. Castiel will be lucky if the waitress calls the police, he knows, because they might take him into custody for the night, and the jail cells are dry. He’s spent more than a few nights in them to know. 

“Well, you can stay here as long as you need to,” the waitress says. Her manicured fingers reach out toward Castiel’s shoulder and he flinches away. He can’t help it. He’s been touched to much today already.

“Thank you,” he replies, because he should. When she returns a few minutes later with his coffee, she looks at him sadly. Castiel doesn’t want to know what she thinks about him. She’s probably right.

 

 

 

It’s the coldest day of the year, and Dean’s stuck in traffic, the wind and snow beating against the side of the Impala as he crawls forward half a foot for every few minutes. He’s hungry and tired and kind of pissed off, because he’s spent the whole day in a conference call to Japan, and in the end nothing had gotten worked out, except that Adler’s going to be yelling at everyone for the next couple of days. 

He pulls into the paring lot of a diner at the first chance he gets, one he’s been to a couple times before. The food isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s familiar and comforting and exactly what he needs right now. Dean parks and grabs his gloves and scarf from the passenger seat, and is just clambering out when he spots something in the corner of his eye.

Someone’s sitting on the ground next to the dumpster behind the diner. They’re curled up in a ball, barely recognizable as a person, and even from twenty feet away Dean can tell that whoever they are, they’re trembling like a leaf in the raging storm.

“Hey!” He calls as he makes his way over, but the person doesn’t answer. They don’t even move to lift their head, besides the shaking. When Dean gets close enough, he leans down, loosening his scarf as he does. “Are you okay?”

“I-I—” Dean thinks that they’re trying to respond through their chattering teeth, but another heavy gust of wind and snow drowns out the words.

“I’m gonna get you out of here, okay?” Dean shouts over the howling of the storm. He reaches out and grabs the person’s arm, and it’s like he punched them. The person—a boy, he can see—jerks back wildly, his entire face red and chapped. He knocks Dean’s hand away in his scrambling, and Dean stumbles back, surprised enough to be knocked off balance.

“D-don’t,” the boy stammers, his eyes slits as he blinks through the snow. He doesn’t look strong enough to hold himself up, and Dean picks himself up in just enough time to grab him as he collapses. Even then, the kid fights him, and every time he gets out a _no_ Dean’s stomach lurches. But he manages to get him into the Impala, bundled into the backseat in his ragged, damp clothes.

“What do you _want_?” The question is asked between trembling breaths that make Dean cringe as he gets behind the wheel.

“I don’t want anything from you.” Maybe it’s because he was too close himself to being in the boy’s position, a long time ago. Maybe he feels guilty for walking away the first time. Dean doesn’t know and he’s not sure he wants to think about it right now. “What’s your name?”

“You just said y-you didn’t want anything.” It sounds like he’s trying to laugh, but all that comes out is a raspy cough. Dean reaches over and cranks up the heat, thanking God that the engine didn’t have time to cool down in the few minutes he was outside. “Castiel.”

“I’m Dean,” he replies as he pulls out of the parking lot and back into traffic.

“Where are we going?” Castiel is tucked up into a ball, plastered to the side of the car like it’s his default position. The shaking has subsided to a quiet tremor, and Castiel’s hair and clothes are dripping onto the leather seats. All Dean can think about is the slowly dropping thermostat, and that if he’d been ten minutes later he might have found a body instead of a person.

“To my house,” Dean says carefully, watching Castiel in the rearview mirror. He doesn’t move, but his eyes close slowly and he seems to deflate, like he’s resigning himself to whatever he thinks Dean is going to do to him. “You can leave whenever you want, just let me give you some clothes.”

“Why? It won’t make a difference.” The words are so quiet that Dean barely hears them over the wind outside the car. He doesn’t have an answer, except that he needs it to make a difference. The silence is thick and heavy as they inch forward, the sound of the wind and Dean’s windshield wipers batting away the snow smothering them in the stuffy heat.

Finally, Dean pulls into his garage, climbing out of his seat as soon as the bay door closes and reaching out to get Castiel inside.

“I can do it,” the boy insists, and Dean wonders what’s happened to him, to make him look at Dean’s outstretched hand as is it’s going to bite him.

“Okay,” he replies quietly, but hovers behind Castiel as he rises on shaking legs, ready to catch him at a moment’s notice. Luckily, he doesn’t need to, and both of them make it safely into the house. “Wait here.”

As he walks into the bedroom to grab a few towels and the warmest clothes he owns, Dean pauses in front of the dresser to shed some of his layers; his hat, scarf, boots, and gloves all go, as well as the heavy winter coat that’s starting to drip melted snow. When he returns to the mudroom, Castiel is leaning heavily against the dryer, his own sodden coat discarded on the floor.

“Here,” Dean offers, holding out the stack he’d compiled. Castiel’s eyes flick down to the bundle, then back up to Dean, and he reaches out tentatively. When he finally takes it from Dean’s hands, he doesn’t let their fingers brush, instead stepping away completely when it’s safely in his arms.

“Are you going to stand there and watch me strip?” Castiel glares like he’s preparing for Dean to say yes, but combined with his thin, shaking figure and wet hair, it only serves to remind Dean of a wet kitten. Instead of retorting, Dean just nods and leaves the room, shutting it behind him.

Dean’s stomach growls angrily as he leans against the wall of the kitchen, reminding him of his forgotten dinner plans. God, he doesn’t know if he even has any food in the house, but there’s no doubt in his mind that Castiel is starving. Dean knows what kind of work Castiel does, and knows that in this weather, he probably hadn’t made enough for a decent meal in weeks. So he starts rummaging through the cabinets, pulling out boxes of pasta and jars of sauce and even some frozen ground beef, enough to make a meal out of, and starts cooking.

It’s something Dean hasn’t indulged in for a while, too caught up in work to do anything but grab takeout on his way home and eat it in front of his laptop or a soap opera. Even just the simple task of making pasta and a few burgers brings back memories of cooking with his mom, back when he was a kid, and Dean smiles to himself as he brings the pasta to a boil.

Dean almost forgets that Castiel is here until he steps out of the mudroom, swamped in Dean’s clothing and looking much smaller than Dean had thought he was. He wonders, briefly, how old Castiel actually is, because the boy looks so vulnerable right now that he could be sixteen or twenty. Dean’s shirt hangs off his frame, loose enough in the shoulders to expose a sharp collarbone, and the sweatpants pool a good three or four inches on the floor by Castiel’s feet.

“Hungry?” Dean asks, and Castiel nods mutely. He looks Dean square in the eye like he’s daring Dean to say something, to stare just a little too long, so Dean averts his eyes and goes back to grilling the three burgers he’d whipped up from ground beef and some spices, long-forgotten in some old cabinet. It doesn’t take too long to finish up the meal, but Castiel stands there silently the whole time, until Dean’s fixing up two plates with mounds of pasta and a burger each. He hazards a guess that Castiel might finish the third burger by himself, but if he doesn’t Dean can always eat it later.

“Thank you,” Castiel says quietly, taking the offered plate and looking around like he isn’t sure where to go. Dean’s table is covered in papers from work, as well as his laptop and various takeout containers. Somehow, it seems to relax Castiel, and after a moment he perches on one of the stools that line Dean’s countertop, next to the still-warm stove.

“No problem,” Dean replies, somewhat awkwardly. He doesn’t want to seem like he’s crowding the boy, so he goes into the adjacent living room and settles into the couch, flicking the TV on. He knows that Castiel is positioned just so that he can see the TV, and leaves the channel on one of the various _Harry Potter_ movies, assuming that Castiel has to be somewhat familiar with the series.

“I’ve never seen this before,” Castiel remarks suddenly, sounding like his mouth is full of food. Dean turns slightly in his seat, looking back at Castiel in confusion.

“You’ve never seen _Harry Potter_?”

“It wasn’t...welcome, in my household,” Castiel says, his voice suddenly guarded as if he thinks he’s said too much. Dean’s more curious than ever now, but he reluctantly turns his eyes away from Castiel and back towards the TV screen. During a lull, he explains some of the finer plot points, and doesn’t check to see whether Castiel is listening or not. At one point, he hears the scrape of silverware and the clink of dishes, then Castiel is back on his stool with another plate of food. He doesn’t interrupt Dean until there’s nothing left to explain, and they finish the rest of the movie in silence that, if not companionable, is at least less awkward than it was before. 

 

Castiel should be scared. He’s alone in a stranger’s house, stranded in the biggest storm of the year, and there are so many things that could go wrong that he’s started to list them in his head, to try and see which one is more likely. Dean could have drugged the food, he knows, but Castiel goes back for seconds anyway because he hasn’t had a real meal in what feels like years. Dean could also, at any point, demand Castiel on his knees, force him there, and Castiel knows that he wouldn’t be able to fight back, not as weak and exhausted as he is now, and especially not up against a man like Dean. Anything could go wrong, he tells himself, but it doesn’t.

Dean feeds him, explains the movie to him, and when the movie’s over, he takes Castiel’s plate out from in front of him, careful not to let their hands or arms brush in the process. Castiel wants to reach out and catch Dean’s sleeve when he starts to wash their dishes, offer to do it himself because he helped make them dirty, but he doesn’t. Instead he just sits and watches, playing idly with the hem of the soft, well-loved shirts Dean had let him borrow.

“Do you want me to leave?” He finally asks, because he can’t stand not knowing. Dean’s hands pause in the middle of scrubbing out a pot, one hand gripping the handle so tight that his knuckles go white.

“I’m not going to make you stay,” he says slowly, and Castiel’s full stomach twists in fear. “But you can stay here as long as you need to.”

It takes a moment to process the words. Castiel blinks, drops his gaze to his hands, then looks back up at Dean, who has his back turned as he finishes washing the pot. As long as he needs. Castiel has been in this city for a year now, but it’s been a long time since he’s slept under a roof that didn’t belong to a shelter.

“You don’t mean that.” The words slip out accidentally and Castiel freezes, half-afraid that they might make Dean change his mind. Another part of him is bristling, wants to be provoked into screaming and shouting. Castiel has never hit anyone, but there has always been a part of him that’s wanted to.

“I do,” Dean says calmly, never once turning to face Castiel. Instead, he picks up a towel and starts to dry the various dishes. “You can stay in my guest bedroom until tomorrow, if you want. Or you could stay until the storm blows over. I won’t bother you. Hell, I won’t even be home for most of the day.”

The longer Castiel thinks about it, the better that sounds. He could stay here for the next week, maybe, if the storm lasts that long, and then he might be able to get his feet under him. He could apply for a job, maybe offer to let Dean fuck him if he’ll buy him some new clothes. The thought makes Castiel’s skin crawl, and he wants to throw up everything he’d eaten in the last hour, but he forces it down. He’ll do what he has to. He’s always done what he has to.

“Thank you,” he says instead. Calm, quiet, nonthreatening.

“It’s just human decency,” Dean replies gruffly, setting down his towel and finally turning to face Castiel.

“No, it’s not.” Dean doesn’t know what to say to this. Castiel looks at him as he leans against the counter, his hands braced behind him and his shirt half untucked. Dean looks like a businessman, he decides. Someone who smiles at his secretary while he’s on a conference call with people from six different countries, someone who gets paid millions to sit behind a desk and talk on the phone. Castiel watches as he gathers himself, as he looks away from the uncomfortable truth: he has a homeless man in his house, a stranger, who he doesn’t know the first thing about. Instead of immediately demanding his clothes back, though, Dean just plasters on a smile and pushes himself away from the support of the marble.

“I’ll show you the spare room.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first time I've posted a WIP in almost two years...I hope it goes better this time! Feel free to check me out or talk about this 'verse at http://psychecas.tumblr.com !


	2. Chapter 2

Dean’s halfway through his morning routine before he remembers. The coffeepot is on and chugging away contentedly and the stove is burning hot, and Dean keeps a single watchful eye on his eggs until Castiel comes stumbling out of the hallway, his eyes bleary and his hair sticking up in all directions. He pauses when he sees Dean, one hand half-raised as if to rub at his face.

“Morning,” Dean says neutrally, hoping his quickly schooled expression hides his momentary shock. Castiel just nods, as reticent as ever, and plops down on the same stool as last night. Dean shrugs and cracks another egg into the skillet, watching Castiel’s eyes track it hungrily. The boy doesn’t take his eyes off the food until Dean forks the one that’s done onto a plate and slides it over to him.

“Forks are in the drawer to your right.”

“Thanks,” Castiel replies, reaching out to grab one before he doubles over suddenly, his body heaving with a sudden bout of coughing. Dean reaches out a hand to help, but draws it back immediately, remembering the terrified litanies of no and stop that had poured out of Castiel’s mouth last night. He resigns himself to watching carefully to make sure Castiel doesn’t choke suddenly.

When Castiel sits up again, his face is red and there are tears beading in the corners of his eyes. He takes a single, heaving breath, and Dean winces at the rattling sound the air makes in his lungs, remembering the snow piled up a foot and a half in front of the diner he’d found Castiel outside of.

“Do you need to see a doctor?” Dean asks, unthinkingly. Castiel scoffs derisively, finally grabbing a fork from the drawer and tucking into his egg.

“Do you think I can afford to see a doctor?” He asks, between bites. Dean feels his brow crease and he looks down at the skillet, at the egg that’s close to smoldering. With a heavy sigh, Dean dumps the charred wreck into the trash can, resigning himself to toast. Switching the burner off, he looks back at where Castiel is sitting, looking just slightly more comfortable than he had last night.

“Just,” he starts, then runs a hand through his hair in agitation. “If it gets any worse, I could work something out, okay?” 

Castiel doesn’t respond, but he does look up again. At this point, their whole relationship seems to be made up of silences and drawn-out eye contact. Dean doesn’t look away.

“If you say so,” Castiel finally replies. He breaks his gaze first, slipping off the stool and running his plate under a stream of water in the sink. A glance at the clock has Dean swearing—he should have left five minutes ago—and Castiel startles minutely. Dean doesn’t take the time to wonder why, instead grabbing his suit jacket and coat from off the back of a chair and his wallet and keys from the table. He feels Castiel watching him as he shrugs on more layers, and is acutely reminded that the few clothes Castiel owns are currently in a heap on the mudroom floor.

Dean turns around, on his way out into the garage, intending to say something, to make some sort of promise, but the kitchen is empty. The skillet is still on the stove, bread still soft in the toaster, and Dean curses unnecessary distractions as he clambers behind the wheel of the Impala, letting the engine warm up for a few moments before turning on the heat and pulling out of the garage. Castiel will be fine for the day, and now is not a good time for Dean to get fired.

Of course, that’s not how Adler sees it. He watches with a frown from his habitual spot in the threshold of his office, a brow raised in disapproval as Dean hangs up his coat. Dean barely spares him a glance before walking into his office and shutting the door behind him. There’s a few things he needs to get done today, especially if he’s going to leave early.

Castiel isn’t sure what to do with himself. When Dean had left, he’d washed the dishes, and spent a long few minutes just looking around the kitchen as he put everything away. After that, he’d gone through the house a couple times, looking into a couple doors and getting a feel for his surroundings. It makes him distinctly uncomfortable—he hasn’t been in a house since he left Milwaukee last year. He doesn’t want to watch television, so Castiel settles on stripping down and taking a long, hot shower in the bathroom adjacent to the spare room he had slept in.

The bed last night had been too soft for comfort, after so long sleeping propped up against walls or on cracked concrete, and the water nearly burns Castiel’s skin when he steps under the spray. He persists though, standing in the steaming stall as the weeks of dirt and grime get pounded out of his skin. Dean’s shampoo smells supposedly like fruit, but not any fruit Castiel’s ever smelled. He washes his hair anyway, letting conditioner soak in as he scrubs his limbs with a bar of soft-smelling soap. Castiel doesn’t like to touch himself much, but now he revels in being able to run his fingers through his too-long hair under the spray and not have to tug any tangles out.

He emerges from the shower damp and pink all over. The towels are soft and new-looking, like Dean restocks them every time one gets threadbare. Castiel avoids looking in the big mirror above the sink until he’s dry, but he’s still shocked at what he sees. His cheekbones and his collarbones, and his hipbones are all sharper than they’ve ever been. Castiel absentmindedly lifts a hand to stroke along his too-prominent ribs, counting each one until they end. His knees are still bruised, his lips are cracked and chapped, his hair almost touches his shoulders. Castiel looks every inch of what he is—half starved, wild. Feral.

After redressing in Dean’s old clothes, which are soft and worn and smell like detergent, Castiel makes his way through the house again, checking every door this time. He finds a room, about as big as the room he’d slept in, where the walls are lined up and down with books. They’re stacked on the floor next to the overflowing shelves, and as he shuts the door behind them Castiel notices that none of them are the same. There’s leather-bound classics and thin books of poetry and even, Castiel notices with a blush, a few particularly raunchy-looking ten cent romances stacked on the floor. A recliner is tucked into the corner, padded with soft cushions, a blanket slung over the back.

Castiel spends a long time perusing the bookshelves before choosing one and settling into the armchair. They seem to be loosely categorized by genre, with the more well-worn tomes on the more accessible shelves. In the end, he selects a dog-eared copy of _Emma_ that’s missing its back cover. The blanket is soft and warm as Castiel drapes it over himself, settled sideways in the chair with his legs over one arm, and he opens the book after a sudden bout of coughing that leaves him shaking and sore.

They’ve been happening more frequently, Castiel thinks. Each time he’s left with a relentless ache in the hollow of his chest and a dry throat, but it’s not the first time he’s been sick on the streets. Dean might have offered to “work something out,” but Castiel knows what that means. He silently makes a promise to himself as he gets comfortable, that if Dean tries to touch him, he’ll leave. No backwards glances, no ‘maybes’. He’ll leave.

Eventually, Castiel gets caught up in his novel. He forgets that he’s in a strange house and loses himself to the familiar story like he hasn’t been able to do in so long. Of course, he’s visited libraries in the last few months, but eventually the suspicious looks of old men at the checkout counter and the middle-aged mothers pulling their toddlers closer when he approached had driven Castiel away. It feels good, to relax like this, cradled in a soft chair without having to worry about closing time.

He relaxes so much, in fact, that when the door of the library opens hours later Castiel doesn’t even notice. It takes Dean clearing his throat conspicuously for Castiel to realize that he’s not alone, and he jerks in his seat, dropping his book.

“Sorry,” he says automatically. Castiel isn’t really sorry, because this has been the most relaxing day he’s had in a while, but he knows that he probably shouldn’t be in here. This is Dean’s _home_ , and Castiel shouldn’t be walking around like he belongs here. Like he’s going to stay for more than a few days. 

“It’s fine,” Dean says, an odd look on his face. He shakes it off when he notices Castiel looking at him, and lifts up a bag that Castiel hadn’t noticed before. “Um. I stopped by a couple places on my way home, I thought you might need some stuff.”

Castiel takes the bag from Dean’s outstretched hand and peers inside, not sure what to expect. 

“You bought me clothes?” He’s confused. Why would Dean do this for him, unless he was expecting something in return? Immediately, Castiel’s stomach turns, and he thinks of the storm still raging outside the house, and he thinks that he won’t be able to take the clothes if Dean wants him to _pay_ for them.

“And some other stuff.” Dean shifts awkwardly, his heavy coat still on. A few stray drops of water roll from his sleeves and onto the carpet, likely melted snow that had fallen on him. “I know you don’t have much, and even if you don’t want to stay, you can keep it.”

“Thanks,” Castiel replies finally, after he’s done sorting through the bag. Dean nods, even more awkwardly, and turns as if he means to leave. Castiel frowns. “Don’t you...want something?”

“No,” Dean says forcefully, barely after Castiel finishes the sentence. “No, these—this is a gift. I don’t want anything like that.”

Dean looks disgusted. Like he can’t believe that Castiel would think so lowly of him. Castiel would apologize, but he doesn’t want to. What Dean doesn’t realize is that this is how he has survived this long. This is what he expects. He’s not going to thank Dean for being a decent human being, or apologize for the reality of his life.

“Okay,” he says.

When Dean finally retreats, Castiel climbs out of the recliner, folding the blanket carefully over the back and sliding the novel back into its slot. Dean hadn’t said anything about him being in here, so Castiel assumes that he can come back, but he’s not going to leave a mess for Dean to clean up. He gathers up the bag Dean had brought and slips into the spare bedroom, stripping quickly. This time, he avoids looking at his reflection.

The clothes don’t all fit perfectly, but it seems that Dean had erred on the side of “too large” in most cases. The thick woolen jacket, however, settles across Castiel’s shoulders in a perfect fit. The sleeves are a little too long, making him feel younger than he is. He starts to sweat in moments in the heated room and sheds the coat, laying it gently back on the bed he’d made that morning.

At the bottom of the bag are smaller things, which Castiel wouldn’t have even thought to ask for. Deodorant, a razor, a toothbrush. A comb. Socks. Castiel sits down heavily on the bed, his fingers starting to tremble as he looks down at the contents of the bag. He gets the sudden urge to fling it across the room, but instead he clutches the plastic tightly, trying to stop the shaking. Castiel is confused. He doesn’t understand anything that Dean’s done for him.

He wants to be angry, but he can’t tell if he is. Castiel slumps off the too-comfortable bed and onto the carpeted floor, the bag still clutched in both hands. His head falls back and he tries to calm his erratic breathing, but he can’t, and he can’t think, and all Castiel can hear is his mother’s words ringing in his ears from years ago, _no one will love you now, Castiel, no one will want you like this_ , and he can’t _breathe_ anymore.

It takes a long time for Castiel to regain control of himself, of his body. He forcibly quells the trembling in his hands, and holds his breath for a long moment before releasing it shakily. Castiel tries to clear his mind, to unclench his fingers from the stretched plastic, to get himself under control. The carpet is rough against the soles of his bare feet. Castiel files away every minuscule detail of the bedroom, every piece of sensory input, until his limbs start to unclench and he can breathe again.

He has tears on his cheeks. He wipes them away. 

Leaving work early wasn’t a problem, really, and Dean walks into the store nervous. He doesn’t know Castiel’s size, or his tastes, or even what he needs, though he knows that it’s probably a lot. In the end, he goes with basic items in several sizes: underwear, socks, a warm coat. Some pants and shirts and gloves. If Castiel decides to leave in the morning, hopefully he won’t freeze. Once he’s done, Dean bundles himself back into his car, one large bag tossed onto the passenger seat, and just sits behind the wheel for the moment, the engine silent.

If Dean wants to be honest with himself, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Castiel is a stranger, a desperate teenager who could be robbing Dean blind right now and escaping into the storm. They haven’t spoken more than a few words to each other in any of their conversations; for all Dean knows he’s an addict, a thief, a liar. And Dean’s buying him _deodorant_.

He’s no bleeding heart, but Dean finds himself concerned about Castiel, finds himself wondering _why_ he’d been on the streets, why even the most well-intended of touches made him react like Dean had burned him. Castiel is a mystery, and if Dean wants to be even _more_ honest, that’s why he likes him. Dean has never liked to do things the easy way, has never liked to take the high road, because the low road is so much more _interesting._ And that’s what Castiel is—he’s interesting. A break from the monotonous life Dean’s settled into at Sandover.

Dean isn’t sure if this makes him a bad person. He goes home and decides not to think about it.

For a few minutes, Dean is afraid that Cas won’t accept the gift, that he’ll realize how messed up this all is and he’ll walk out of Dean’s house with nothing but the clothes on his back, that he’ll freeze to death in mere hours out in the snow. When Castiel finally does emerge from his bedroom, nearly an hour after Dean had given him the bag, he has tear tracks on his cheeks. His eyes are puffy and don’t leave the floor as he mumbles a thank you and dodges back into his room, plate in hand, when Dean offers him dinner. Castiel eats almost twice as much as he does, which is kind of a shock and kind of not, all at the same time.

When Dean was a teenager, he would have eaten a lot had he been able to, had he not been watching every cent that came and left his wallet, always keeping an eye on how many days before his next paycheck, how many days before Dad’s next drinking binge. He knows that in his later teens and twenties he had more than made up for the hollowness between his ribs during childhood, but the sheer quantity of food that Castiel seems to pack down is beyond what Dean probably eats in a day. But that’s what it’s like to be starving, Dean remembers. He knows that back then he would have taken any food given to him and scarfed it down in seconds flat before coming back for more, and that’s exactly what Castiel does. He shuffles out again ten minutes later in new clothes, in new, slightly baggy pajama pants and Dean’s shirt, which he’s been wearing since last night. The collar is loose enough to expose the boy’s pointed collarbones and the dip between them. Dean forcibly tears his eyes away from the exposed strip of skin. He told Castiel that he didn’t want anything like that, and he meant it.

Dean, for his part, strips out of his suit after dinner, taking care to hang up his coat after discarding the rest of his layers. He takes a long shower, standing under the spray and determinedly thinking about nothing at all as he washes himself mechanically and steps out into his room in nothing but a towel, looking for something to wear. Unlike the rest of the house, his bedroom is in a constant state of disarray, with clothing strewn across his dresser and boxes stacked in the corner that haven’t been touched since he moved in two years ago. It’s still funny to think that he has a _house_ , not some apartment downtown or a motel room for a few days or weeks, but a _house._ Somewhere he can come home to.

That night, Dean emails Bobby Singer. The man’s practically his father but he doesn’t address him as such, but he asks him for advice. Dean doesn’t keep secrets from Bobby, so he tells him about Cas. He asks what he should do, how he should behave. Bobby has more experience picking up half-dead, homeless teenagers than Dean does.

He sends the email with a definitive _whoosh_ and closes his laptop, placing it on his bedside table gently. Dean’s sitting on his bed, legs criss-crossed on top of the covers, in nothing but a worn shirt and some boxers, and he’s tired. It’s not even ten PM yet, he thinks, a little wryly. So much for the life on the road that Dean had idealized as a child, he muses. Dean’s halfway into a full-on funk when he hears a noise from down the hall.

Stumbling out of his bedroom on legs riddled with pins and needles, Dean trips his way down the dark hallway towards the closed door of the spare room. The noise comes again, something like a groan muffled from behind the door, and after a moment of silence Dean opens it quietly, peering into the darkness.

He doesn’t see anything at first, his eyes not adjusted, but then Dean takes in Castiel, buried under the covers. His legs are thrashing and his eyes are squeezed shut, the covers drawn up all the way to his chin. Moments later he jerks again, and Dean pushes the door open a little wider. He approaches the bed carefully—he doesn’t want to overstep his bounds, but he knows that Castiel would probably rather be woken up from his nightmare.

When he gets close enough to see the tears sliding horizontally across Castiel’s face, Dean gets the sudden urge to reach out and wipe them away. Castiel is asleep though, and Dean is vividly reminded of the way he’d fought when Dean was dragging him into the Impala. So instead he reaches out and snaps his fingers in front of Castiel’s face.

“Cas,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Cas, wake up.”

Castiel sits bolt upright. Dean jerks back in surprise, taking in the wide-eyed fear Castiel quickly tries to shutter. His chest is heaving and they stare at each other for a long time, until Castiel regains his breath, until he closes his eyes and reaches up to wipe the dampness from his cheeks.

“I’m sorry.” Castiel doesn’t sound like he’s used to apologizing. The words are stilted and awkward, and now he makes every excuse not to look at Dean, his hands gripping the sheets so tightly his knuckles have turned white.

“You were having a nightmare,” Dean replies.

“Yes. Thank you for waking me up.” The words are mechanical. Robotic. He still doesn’t meet Dean’s gaze. Dean nods and begins to back out of the room. As soon as he shuts the door behind him, Dean hears Castiel take a long, shaky breath, and then sob it out. He retreats back to his room, feeling like he’s witnessed something that he wasn’t supposed to.

Castiel doesn’t go back to sleep for a long time. He waits until the house is completely silent and then slips out of bed, his socked feet making no noise as he escapes from the carpeted room into the hardwood of the rest of the house. He’s always liked night like this, has always liked feeling that he’s the only person awake in the whole world.

The overhead light in Dean’s kitchen flickers, so he turns it off after a few short minutes. It’s just enough time to grab the peanut butter and bread out from Dean’s cabinets, which he’d taken stock of that morning, and soon Castiel is wandering into the library with his sandwich in one hand. Unlike the rest of the house, Castiel doesn’t think he like the way this room feels in the silence and darkness of night, so he takes _Emma_ and leaves, back into the connected living room and kitchen. 

Very carefully not thinking about anything, Castiel flicks the TV on and hits mute. He’s not sure what the program is, maybe some late-night rerun of _Star Trek_ , but all he needs is the play of light across the room and the comfort of not being the only moving thing around. Castiel bundles himself up on the couch, wrapped in a comforter dragged from his bed, and settles back into Austen, which is just as warm and comforting as the blankets around him and the sandwich sitting heavy in his stomach.

He isn’t sure exactly when he falls asleep again, but when Castiel wakes up there’s sunlight streaming in through the windows, and it smells like Dean is making breakfast. He’s terrified, for a moment, that Dean will be angry, but Castiel shoves down the fear on the grounds that Dean’s never yelled at him once, and has never seemed to be angry with Castiel. When he sits up, his neck is stiff.

“Good morning,” Dean calls from the kitchen when he notices that Castiel is awake. He groans in response, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and wiping the drool off his lips. When he stands up, the book falls out of his lap and onto the floor.

“Where’d you find that?” Dean asks, a frown creasing his eyebrows. Castiel freezes.

“It was on your bookshelf,” he explains quietly, his voice creaky and rough. He stifles the bout of coughs he can feel rising in his chest. “In the library.”

Dean stares at the book for a moment, watching Castiel pick it up from the ground and hold it like he’s not sure he’s allowed to, before shrugging. “I just haven’t seen that copy in a while. I think I’ve probably had it since high school.”

“You had to read Austen in high school?” Castiel asks. Dean looks up from the pancake he’s flipping with a raised eyebrow.

“No.” Castiel flushes and tries to disentangle himself from the comforter. He trips and sprawls across the floor, the blanket tangled between his legs as all his breath rushes out of his chest, leaving him gasping to regain some of it. There’s a loud clatter and then Dean’s rushing over, leaning forward like he’s going to try and help Castiel up, his hands outstretched, and Castiel flinches back so violently that his head knocks against the floor. He gasps in a heaving breath and coughs, ignoring the shocked and hurt look on Dean’s face.

“Are you okay?” Dean asks, and Castiel nods his head. Dean seems to sense that he’s lying, but he backs away slowly, warily. Like he wants to make sure that Castiel isn’t going to break a limb just by lying on the floor. Honestly, he wouldn’t put it past himself. Instead of speaking and wasting the breath that he’s barely managed to regain. Castiel pushes himself into a sitting position that allows him to untangle the comforter from the relative safety of Dean’s floor.

When he finally does manage it, Castiel stands unsteadily, ignoring Dean’s twitching hands that say that he wants to reach out and help. He tries to keep the tears down altogether, but when they inevitably spring into his eyes Castiel blinks them away forcefully. He doesn’t need Dean to see him cry again.

He stumbles into the bathroom and braces himself on the counter with one hand. With a few palmfuls of hot water, Castiel scrubs his face until it’s pink, and runs his damp fingers through his hair, which is still soft from the conditioner he’d used yesterday. Ignoring the puffiness of his eyes, Castiel brushes his teeth, spitting out too-fresh toothpaste into the sink and trying not to gag at the minty taste. He’d had a toothbrush, and even a change of clothes, in the bag that he’d left behind the diner Dean had taken him from, but Castiel knows that they’re gone by now. He couldn’t get them back even if he wanted to.

This time he lets himself cough, watches as the frothy specks spray across the bowl of the sink, mint flying from his mouth. It feels like his lungs are trying to expel something, and when a something thick and slimy makes its way up his throat, Castiel spits it out. His stomach churns.

When he emerges, Dean is filling two mugs with coffee, a large stack of pancakes on one serving dish and a pile of scrambled eggs. He doesn’t say anything about Castiel’s nightmare, or his fall, and they sit at Dean’s newly cleared kitchen table in silence. Dean reads the newspaper like he doesn’t have anywhere to be. For the first time Castiel notices that Dean’s not wearing a suit—he’s in a T-shirt and jeans, the frayed ends falling just an inch too long to the floor. He looks...casual.

“What day is it?” Castiel asks. Dean looks up from the paper.

“It’s Friday,” he replies. Like he’s surprised Castiel doesn’t know.

“No, I mean, what’s the date?” Something inside Castiel shrivels when he asks. He’s ashamed, but that’s nothing new. He’s had to give up most of his pride in the last year, but this is a new low. He hasn’t checked the papers in a while, and the look Dean’s giving him now is like the look the waitress had given him when he’d explained that the shelters were full. He doesn’t tell Dean that he doesn’t want his pity. He knows that he’s going to get it anyway.

“It’s, um—” Dean starts to say, but he’s cut off when the front door of the house slams open. In the doorway stands a woman, about Castiel’s height, who looks like she’s wrapped in about six layers of jackets and sweaters. Her bright red hair is wind-tousled and her cheeks match, flushed against the cold. She slams the front door shut and immediately bursts into motion, stripping off layer after layer until she stands in nothing but a sweater and jeans. Only then does she seem to give them any mind, glancing between Dean and Cas as if she’s just realizing that she’s interrupting something.

“Hey, Charlie,” Dean says blandly, like this is something he’s used to. Maybe it is.

“Hey, Deano,” she replies. “Your sister dumped me.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaa ok so this chapter was a little bit tough bc i'm not super good at working with 3+ characters in the same scene so please feel free to point out any mistakes or continuity errors of just shitty characterization!! thanks!!

Once Charlie has finished stripping off her various layers, she leans back out of the still-open door and grabs a large duffle bag that’s coated with at least two inches of snow. Dean stares on in abject horror. This isn’t exactly the first time that Charlie has crashed in the spare room, but she’s never looked like _this_ , bags under her eyes and a determined set to her jaw that makes it clear that she’s been doing her best not to cry.

“Did you...walk here?” He asks, delicately. Charlie slams the door behind her and glares. Castiel is glancing between them, wide-eyed and startled. Charlie doesn’t answer, instead shaking the snow from her hair, stomping into the kitchen, her bag discarded by the door as she rummages in the cupboard and pulls out a bag of tortilla chips. She settles into the chair next to Dean with a loud thunk and tears the bag open.

“Are you gonna just eat those?” Dean figures that he should just stop asking questions now, because Charlie levels him with a glare that he hasn’t seen since _his_ last break up. Castiel looks petrified now, as stiff as a board and looking like he’s ready to bolt out of his seat if Charlie so much as makes eye contact with him again.

“Cassie’s on her way,” she finally says, through a mouthful of chips. “We’re marathoning Tolkien today. Extended editions.”

Dean has learned not to argue with Charlie during a breakup, so he just nods and stands up, clearing his and Castiel’s place while she munches angrily. He only realizes that leaving her alone with Castiel might be a bad idea as he’s placing the dishes in the sink, and hears her stop chewing suddenly.

“I never figured jailbait was Dean’s _type,_ ” she says bitterly, and Dean can hear Castiel’s sharp intake of breath, can almost see the way he’s tensing up in his seat. Dean stets down his plate insistently, then strides back out to the table.

“Charlie, that’s enough.” He hates this, hates the way Charlie is so kind and cheerful until she’s _not,_ until she’s been hurt enough to get snappy and bitter. This seems to snap her out of it though, and she takes one look at Castiel’s hunched shoulders and his downturned, flushed cheeks, and winces.

“I’m sorry,” she tries, but Castiel doesn’t answer. He rises from his chair like he’s trying to make as little noise as possible, and retreats silently into the spare room, the door shutting softly behind him. Charlie looks up fro where she’s sitting, looking stricken. “I—I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” Dean sighs, because he _does_. Charlie’s eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. She sits there for a moment, slumped back into her chair, and then she starts to bawl. Dean isn’t used to this—Charlie always seems so unshakably cheerful. “It’s just—It’s complicated.”

“I’d drink to that,” she huffs.

“It’s nine in the morning.” 

They sit there in silence for a long while, and eventually Dean’s hands find Charlie’s on top of the table. Jo might be his sister, but Charlie has been his best friend since middle school, and she’s always been there for him. Their split might not be pretty, but at least Dean knows that he’s always going to have his friend’s back along with his sister’s.

There’s a sudden rap on the door, and Dean startles, but Cassie doesn’t bother to wait for him to let her in, shutting the door behind her and shaking off the dampness from her curls. She looks radiant, Dean notices, but then Cassie always does. She doesn’t even deign him with a response, choosing instead to drape herself over Charlie like a blanket. Charlie sinks into the embrace with a soft groan, her fingers clenching around Dean’s.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Cassie murmurs, flashing Dean a _look_ over Charlie’s shoulder. He takes that to mean that he should start piling the ice cream out of the freezer. Charlie sniffles and nods, and Dean gets the sickening feeling that she’s gonna start crying again. Cassie, though, just pats Charlie’s shoulder kindly and draws away, pulling Charlie with her. They’re both intimately familiar with Dean’s house, and Cassie leads her into the well-equipped living room and onto the couch that’s worn but comfortable. It’s a testament to how shaken Charlie is that she doesn’t protest at being manhandled, instead settling into the several actual blankets Cassie drapes on top of her.

“Okay, ladies,” Dean announces, striding in with three tubs of ice cream from the freezer and three spoons, left over from the last time Charlie and Jo had come over for drinks. “We’ve got chocolate, double chocolate, and mint chocolate chip, take your pick.”

Charlie reaches remorsefully for the double chocolate, which Dean hands over, following with the mint chocolate to Cassie. He goes to set up the first movie and tries not to listen in to the whispers behind him. He’s just about to settle into the spot cleared for him when Castiel pokes his head out of the spare room.

“Oh,” Dean says, unthinkingly. He’d almost forgotten. Excusing himself quietly, Dean meets Castiel in the door of his bedroom. It’s almost alarming how quickly the bedroom has become _his_ in Dean’s mind.

“Hey,” Castiel says, quietly. The sudden fullness of the house seems to have brought back the silence of his first night with Dean, and he wants to reach out and grip Castiel’s shoulder reassuringly. Dean hadn’t realized how much casual touches were a part of his relationships until they _weren’t_ with Castiel, and it’s a little unnerving.

“Um, it looks like they’re not leaving any time soon,” Dean says apologetically. Castiel nods, ducking his head. “Look, I’m sorry about what Charlie said. That’s not—you know that I don’t expect anything like that from you, right? That’s not why I’m letting you stay here.”

“Yes, you’ve made that very clear,” Castiel replies drily. He meets Dean’s eyes, and holds his gaze for longer than he has all morning.

“Yeah.” Dean stands awkwardly, aware of Cassie and Charlie’s eyes on him. “You can, um, join us if you want to, if you’ve never seen Lord of the Rings?”

“Seen what?” Castiel looks puzzled. Dean gapes. 

“Lord of the Rings. You know, _the_ precursor to modern fantasy?” It shouldn’t surprise him—Cas hadn’t seen _Harry Potter_ , for god’s sake—yet it does, somehow.

“I wasn’t exposed to many franchises as a child,” Castiel replies carefully. Dean looks at him for a long moment.

“That’s it,” he decides, restricting the urge to reach out and grab Cas’s wrist and lead him into the living room. “You’re coming with us.”

Castiel isn’t sure exactly what he’s signed up for. There are two strange women eyeing him warily as Dean leads him into the dining room, and he’s suddenly very aware of the pajama pants paired with Dean’s too-large shirt, which are hanging off his thin frame.

“Ladies, this is Castiel, he’s been staying with me for a few days, and he has never seen Lord of the Rings. Castiel, this is Charlie and Cassie, the eternal loves of my life.”

“Dean, you’re too sweet,” Cassie demurs, but there’s a glint in her eye that makes Castiel think that there’s history there that he doesn’t know. He stands in the threshold until Dean’s done fiddling with the television, then settles stiffly into one of the armchairs opposite the couch where Dean, Charlie, and Cassie have all piled themselves on top of each other. It looks a little ridiculous, Castiel thinks, three fully grown people lying on a couch that somehow manages to accommodate them all without anything vital hanging over the edge, but it’s also kind of sweet. Charlie keeps glancing at him like he wants to say something, but every time she opens her mouth, lip trembling, she shuts it immediately after and turns away.

Castiel is so preoccupied watching the three of them that he nearly forgets why he’s out here in the first place. His gaze seems to be consistently drawn to Dean, who looks more relaxed than Castiel has ever seen him, still in pajamas and sprawled between two women he’s obviously incredibly close with. Castiel isn’t quite sure why Charlie came to her ex’s brother’s house immediately after their breakup, but Dean doesn’t seem upset.

Instead, his fingers are gently stroking through Charlie’s hair while they watch, their eyes glued to the screen. Castiel isn’t particularly interested in the movie, though he supposes that he should be. Cassie’s head is resting on Dean’s bicep, and Castiel catches the glint of a wedding ring on her left hand. They seem like one cohesive unit, three people so used to operating within the parameters of each other that they’ve ceased to care about personal space. Castiel’s fingers twitch on his thighs, and he forces himself to watch the movie instead of his companions.

Once he’s actually watching, however, Castiel is engrossed. He finds himself on the floor, wrapped in one of the infinite blankets Dean seems to have on hand, so that he can see the screen better. When it’s paused suddenly, Castiel jolts, his back hitting the front of the couch Dean and his friends are sitting on.

“Snack break,” Cassie declares, her newly-bare feet hitting the ground next to Castiel. He looks dubiously at the three empty cartons of ice cream sitting sadly on the coffee table. Dean and Charlie seem to agree though, and Castiel feels like there’s something unspoken happening that he shouldn’t be a part of. He debates retreating to the spare room, but instead stays where he is, letting Dean and Cassie walk around him into the kitchen. The living room is quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie says again, her voice small. “I’m not usually like this, I shouldn’t have made assumptions about you and Dean.”

“It’s okay,” Castiel replies, dropping his chin onto his knees and wrapping his arms around them. The carpet is soft underneath him, the blanket keeping him comfortably warm. He doesn’t say that he probably deserves whatever she’d first thought about him.

Dean and Cassie come trooping in, arms full of food, but they don’t start the movie again. Instead, they settle themselves on either side of Charlie, ignoring her groans of protest.

“Come on, _you_ called _me_ , remember?” Cassie cajoles, and Charlie buries her head in her hands. Castiel turns around so that he’s facing the couch, a spectator to whatever is inevitably going to occur.

“Okay, this is an intervention,” Dean announces solemnly. “Before we can let you eat any more ice cream, we need to know what’s going on. Start talking, kid.”

“I don’t wanna,” Charlie mumbles, but when faced with the glares of her two friends, she finally caves.

“Ellen wants Jo to move back to Nebraska.” Castiel isn’t sure what this means, but from Dean’s sharp intake of breath and Cassie’s creased brow, he’s sure that it isn’t good. “And she’s never liked me, and Jo’s going to go, and she told me to leave!”

“Oh, sweetie,” Cassie murmurs, letting Charlie rest her head on her shoulder, one hand reaching up to stroke through Charlie’s hair. 

“She said she didn’t want me to go with her,” Charlie says miserably. “And we’ve _talked_ about this, it’s not like it’s the first time she’s thought about it, but she never told me that she didn’t want me there with her. I just—I never thought she’d end it like this.”

Castiel looks away. He feels like an intruder, feels like he shouldn’t be here. It’s the most out-of-place he’s felt in Dean’s house yet.

“You should talk to her,” Cassie suggests. “Not today, obviously, but you should talk.”

“I was planning on getting my stuff while she was at work.”

“Hey,” Dean offers. “She hasn’t talked to me about any of this. That says something.”

“Maybe,” Charlie says. They lapse into silence, and eventually Dean presses play again.

The movies last an incredibly long time. Nothing meaningful is said between the trio behind Castiel while they play, but every once in a while Charlie will reach over to the coffee table and grab the box of tissues, only to return them a few minutes later. By the time the credits are rolling for _Return of the King_ , it’s past midnight and his eyes are misty. 

“So, Cas?” Dean says. Castiel jolts—this is the first time he’s been addressed directly since the first movie. “What did you think?”

“That was wonderful,” he admits, rolling his shoulders and looking up at Dean, who grins.

“Told ya.”

“Wait, you’ve never seen these before?” Charlie breaks in, looking a little more chipper. “We popped your Tolkien cherry?”

“Charlie!” Dean’s laughing too much to sound stern at this point, and he shoves Charlie gently. She laughs and slides to the floor next to Castiel, who smiles back at her. She huffs and leans over, and his body registers it before he does, and Castiel is flinching away from her friendly nudge so hard that he topples over. He catches himself on his palms as he topples backwards, only to see her staring at him, shocked. Dean looks stricken from above them, all laughter gone from his face, and Cassie looks almost horrified.

Guilt twists in Castiel’s stomach. He wants to apologize, but he’s not sure what he’d be apologizing for. He wants to run away, he wants to sit back against the couch and pretend like that never happened, he wants to be normal. _You can’t do anything right_.

“Anyone up for drinks?” Cassie finally asks, her voice a little higher pitched than usual. Charlie swallows and nods, along with Dean. “Cas, can you come help me?”

“I—sure,” he replies, his voice breaking slightly. He ignores the offered hand and stands up on his own.

Once they’re in the kitchen, Cassie doesn’t move to rummage for glasses, or anything else. Instead, she braces herself on the counter and looks at Castiel like she she’s angry but trying to hide it. When she starts to speak, her voice is shaking but firm, quiet in a way that means that she doesn’t want anyone to overhear her.

“I don’t know much about you, and I don’t know what’s going on between you and Dean, but if he’s hurting you, or if he’s trying to—to _force_ you to do things, I don’t care how long Dean and I have been friends, Castiel, I will help you even if it means hurting him. Dean means a lot to me, but please understand that you don’t have to stay here if he’s hurting you. I have friends who can help you and get you set up somewhere. Please,” she says, like he _deserves_ what she’s offering. “Castiel, you don’t deserve to be treated like this.”

When she reaches out to take his hand, Castiel jerks away and looks down.

“Dean hasn’t touched me,” he says softly. He remembers freezing, halfway dead and wanting to finish the job, and he remembers hands on him, firm pressure on his arms leading him into a heated car, remembers thrashing to get away because they wouldn’t stop _touching_ him. “He’s letting me stay here until the storm blows over. He hasn’t asked me for anything like that, and he hasn’t hit me.”

Cassie looks like she had steeled herself for the worst answer possible, and Castiel gets the very sudden feeling that if Dean _had_ hit him and she had found out, Dean would be lucky to ever walk again. The thought makes him uncomfortably warm inside. He’s been in Cassie’s presence for a day, and already she seems to care about him.

“As long as you’re sure,” she says. “But if you need _anything_ , please don’t hesitate to call me. My door is always open.”

She scrawls her number down on a post-it note from a stack on the table and passes it to Castiel, who folds it neatly and slips it in his pocket. He’s—stunned, would be the best word. Cassie seems to gather herself, taking a deep breath and putting on a smile that obviously requires some effort.

“It’s been a long day,” she says. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

It’s tempting. Castiel had a few drinks while he was on the streets, had smoked a little, but every time, he felt a looming threat and remembered lessons he’d learned as a child— _addiction runs in the family, Castiel. You wouldn’t want to end up like_ that _, would you?_

“I can’t,” he says, instead of accepting. “Legally, I mean.”

“Orange juice it is, then,” Cassie replies lightly, pulling the juice from the fridge and the vodka from the freezer. “I hope you don’t mind if the rest of us help ourselves, though. I have a feeling Charlie’s gonna need it.”

On their way back into the living room, Dean stops Castiel in the doorway.

“I feel like I’ve already apologized for Charlie enough already, but I’m sorry about that. I should have told them.”

“It’s fine.” Castiel cuts Dean off hurriedly. He doesn’t like this, having everyone’s attention on him. It feels like an itch under his skin, one he can’t get rid of.

“If you say so,” Dean says dubiously, but he returns to the couch, drink in hand.

Castiel leans against the doorframe and sighs, fiddling with the glass in his hand. This is going to take some getting used to.

By the time two A.M. rolls around, Dean is pleasantly tipsy. Charlie is lying on the floor next to Castiel, idly playing with her hair as she mumbles out incoherent stories about Jo. Cas nods along sympathetically when she pauses, and Cassie is lying across the couch with her head on Dean’s lap.

“Cassie,” Charlie announces suddenly and clearly as she pushes herself up into a sitting position. “Why’re you so good at breakups?”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, alcohol slowing his speech slightly. “Charlie and I weren’t this wrecked when you broke it off with _us_.”

Cassie sighs. “I knew it would come to this. Why do _I_ have to give you guys breakup advice?”

“Because you’re _good_ at them,” Charlie slurs, then frowns slightly and turns to Castiel, swaying a little as she does. “That came out wrong.”

Castiel stifles his laugh behind his hand.

“I mean.” Cassie starts, then stalls. She looks up at Dean with wide eyes, like she’s begging him to get her out of this. He grins and shakes his head. “When I broke up with you and Dean, we both knew _why_. It wasn’t some huge fight where one of us stormed down. We sat down, we talked, and it sucked, but it was mutual, and we’re still friends.”

Charlie’s face sours. “At least one of us has a healthy relationship.”

Cassie glances down at her engagement ring, the ghost of a smile flitting across her face.

“How is Victor, anyway?” Dean asks. “Haven’t seen him since the last time he tried to arrest me.”

“Victor is _fine_ , Dean. I don’t get why you think he hates you so much.”

“Cass, he _literally_ told me that he would beat the shit out of me if it wouldn’t lose him his badge.” This gives her pause, but she immediately waves it off.

“Look, I’m sure once you spend a little time together you’ll be great friends. He reminds me a lot of you.”

“Well that’s frightening,” Dean murmurs, and she snorts loudly, then reaches up and slaps him lightly on the cheek. It’s been a long time since he and Cassie dated, and they’ve had time to grow comfortable around each other. Dean counts himself as lucky to have so many people he considers family, so many people he can be himself around. He looks at Castiel who’s currently waving his hand in front of Charlie’s face and laughing when she blinks in confusion, and wonders who Castiel has to be close to, to trust. He gets the sinking feeling that the answer might be _no one_.

When Charlie passes out, after significantly more drinks than either Dean or Cassie, he has to pick her up and carry her onto the couch.

“Hey Cas, could you get me a couple blankets from your room?” He asks offhandedly, more concerned with propping pillows under Charlie’s head than how he phrases the question. Castiel nods and complies, but before he turns away he gives Dean an odd look that he’s a little too drunk to decipher. 

“What’s up with you and him?” Cassie asks, returning from the kitchen with an empty bowl and a glass of water to put by Charlie’s head, just in case.

“Um...it’s kind of a weird story. He was sitting outside Rudy’s a couple days ago, in the middle of the storm, and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go so I told him he could stay with me until it blew over, or until he got a job or something.” Cassie looks at him in a way that’s half exasperated and half fond.

“One of these days you’re going to get yourself killed picking up strays.”

“He’s a good kid, Cassie, and I’m pretty sure he’s not an addict or anything. I just couldn’t leave him there to freeze to death—I mean, what would you have done?”

She sighs, probably debating whether or not to hit him with one of the many pillows scattered around the room. “The exact same thing, probably.”

Castiel enters the room and they both fall silent in a way that’s probably extremely telling, but Castiel doesn’t do much more than unfold the blankets and drape them over charlie, tucking them into the foot of the couch without ever once touching her skin. Dean watches, a little bewildered. There are so many contradictory things about Castiel. Sometimes Dean thinks that he must have grown up with someone who cared very little about him, who may have actively hurt him, but in times like these he seems to be almost nurturing, tender, and unfathomably kind.

“You can have the spare bedroom,” Castiel offers, looking at Cassie. “I can always sleep on the floor somewhere.”

It makes Dean’s stomach turn. Castiel probably has a lot of practice sleeping on the floor, or on the ground.

“Take my bed,” he blurts, before he can really think about it. “None of us have to work tomorrow, so it should be fine. I’ll take the floor.”

“I...Are you sure?” Castiel asks, bewildered. Dean wonders if Cas will ever get used to being offered things. He hopes that he does.

“As long as you don’t mind sharing a room.” Castiel shrugs, feigning a nonchalance Dean can tell isn’t really there. As he goes into the mudroom to grab his only sleeping bag from the shelf, Dean wonders how this is going to turn out.

In the end, it isn’t that bad. It’s 3:30 in the morning, and Dean could almost drift off to sleep if Castiel would stop tossing on the bed.

“Are you okay?” Dean finally asks. Castiel stops fidgeting immediately; even the sound of his breathing ceases. “I mean, is there anything I can do?”

“No,” he finally replies. “It’s just, your bed is so soft.”

“Oh.” Dean pushes himself up so that he’s sitting with his sleeping bag encasing him like a bodysuit. He feels a little ridiculous, but he also doesn’t want to unzip it or climb out because even though his house is heated, it’s _warm_ in the bag and he doesn’t particularly feel like warming it up again after the air gets in. 

“I’m not used to sleeping on something so soft.” Castiel leaves the sentence hanging in the air, like he’s expecting Dean to follow up on it. He can’t really resist the invitation, but this is the most open Castiel has been since Dean met him, so he wracks his brain trying to make the most of the question he’s allowed.

“Why were you on the streets?” He finally asks. Castiel turns, and Dean can see in the dim light from the window that he’s lying on his back, one hand tucked under his head. He doesn’t answer for a long time.

“I’m from Milwaukee. I thought that I could get out, you know. I always wanted to. I was going to go to college, but I got disowned, and no one was hiring there, so I couldn’t afford it. I took all the money I had and took a bus down here, because I thought I could get a job, maybe an apartment. Go to school one day, if I saved enough. But no one wants to hire a homeless eighteen year old, so I never got that job. I never got that apartment. And I didn’t want to starve, so when people told me I was pretty I let them, when they gave me money I took it and did what they wanted me to. I’m not ashamed.”

He sounds like he is. Castiel’s voice shakes on the last sentence.

“I don’t think you should be,” Dean says honestly. He lowers himself back down until he’s lying flat again.

“Good night, Dean,” Castiel says flatly, like he’s holding himself back. Dean watches as he turns onto his side, now facing away from Dean.

“Night, Cas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> check me out on tumblr at http://psychecas.tumblr.com for updates on this fic and daily drabbles!!


	4. Chapter 4

Castiel wakes up to the sun in his face and the smell of bacon. Dean’s sleeping bag is gone from the floor and his pillow is back on the bed next to Castiel. He lies there for a long moment, looking up at the white ceiling and listening to the sounds of soft chatter coming from down the hall. The bedroom door is closed.

In a brief moment of motivation, he gets up to take a shower. Dean’s en suite is larger than the guest bathroom, and has a bathtub in addition to the shower. The bedroom itself isn’t particularly neat, but so far this feels like the most _lived in_ room of the house. Dean’s deodorant and toothpaste are strewn across the long countertop, one of the cupboards is swinging half-open, and the shower floor is still damp. The thought makes Castiel warm for a reason he can’t quite place.

The bruises on Castiel’s knees are fading. His fingers skate around them softly as he washes himself, not pressing down, just cataloguing. This is the cleanest he’s been in a long time and Castiel relishes it, savors the feeling of not _needing_ to wash, but just _wanting_ to. Necessity had controlled his life for so long that having choices feels almost like a luxury. Having Dean feels almost like a luxury.

By the time he emerges from the bathroom, hair sticking damp in all directions, Dean has left a fresh change of clothes on the rumpled bed. Castiel drops his towel and changes quickly, trying to avoid looking in the mirror again. He doesn’t want to see the effects of hunger and illness on his frame, even though he feels them with every movement.

Charlie looks miserable. This is the first thing Castiel notices when he enters the kitchen. Dean is standing over the stove, flipping pancakes methodically, and Cassie is on the phone, her button-down from the day before slightly rumpled, her hair flying in every direction imaginable. Her brow is pinched, put her voice is professional. Castiel idly wonders at his own clothing—Dean had lain out black slacks and a white button down. They aren’t exactly leisure clothes.

“Hey!” Dean whispers when he notices that Castiel has entered. Charlie lifts her head and waves half-heartedly, then leans back over so that her head is between her knees. There’s a suspiciously clean bowl just to the left of her chair, and Castiel decides to give her a wide berth when Dean beckons him over.

“Listen, as soon as the girls leave I’m going to take care of some things with my sister, and I thought in the meantime I could drop you off at my friend Benny’s place. He owns a restaurant and I know they’re always looking for some help around there. I called him a few minutes ago and said that he’d take you on for the day, maybe after that if you’re up for it.”

In the silence that follows, Dean’s face falls ever so slightly. For some reason, this causes Castiel’s stomach to jolt, and he nods enthusiastically.

“Of course, yes, thank you,” he stammers, unsure which phrase he means to use first. Dean’s grin returns, and Castiel’s stomach settles. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to Dean _giving_ him things, without expecting anything in return. He hasn’t had a real job since high school. He steps away from Dean, suddenly too aware of the scant space between them, of Dean’s shoulder just inches away from Castiel’s chest.

When he sits in the chair across from Charlie, she looks up at him with a muffled groan.

“Don’t ever drink,” she cautions graves. “Just. Don’t do it.”

“I won’t,” he promises. She looks a little bit green, but she flashes him a brief smile anyway.

“I heard Dean’s getting you a job,” she says, soft enough not to be heard over Cassie’s phone. “Benny’s gonna treat you good, he’s great to his employees.”

“Dean’s too nice to me,” Castiel says, looking down at the table between them. “I don’t know why he’s doing this.”

“Because he wants to, dummy.” Her words are scathing, but the smile Charlie gives him prompts Castiel to return it.

“Damn right I want to,” Dean breaks in, swooping down with a stack of pancakes that towers above the plate. Castiel wonders how they’re going to eat all that, especially with the plate of bacon and the fruit that Dean sets down immediately after. Charlie whistles.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw you eat _fruit_ , Dean!” Dean glares at her from his new seat next to Castiel, and across the room, Castiel sees Cassie stifle a laugh. “I’m not joking.”

“I’m not twenty anymore,” Dean admits mournfully, spearing a piece of pineapple with his fork and popping it obstinately into his mouth, finishing his sentence with his mouth full of food. “And because exercising sucks, I’ve decided to eat better. No more frozen meals, hopefully less takeout. I’ve missed cooking.”

“Yeah,” Charlie says, her tone wistful. “I remember when you ate nothing but pizza and beer and still had a six-pack.”

“I can tell you that he ate _significantly_ more that just pizza and beer,” Cassie jokes, her phone finally off as she takes a seat as well. Castiel does a double take—the table is full, he’s surrounded with people who barely know him, and they’re treating him like family. Like he belongs.

“Dean, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think I’m gonna keep this down for long,” Charlie warns. This doesn’t seem to stop her from shoving a few forkfuls and an entire piece of bacon into her mouth after she says it, and she closes her eyes and groans. “God, I missed your cooking. Remind me why I moved out again?”

Dean raises an eyebrow, and she falls silent suddenly. She and Cassie exchange guilty looks. Castiel feels like he’s missing something.

“Yeah...sorry,” Cassie mutters. “That was maybe bad timing.”

“That you started dating my best friend two weeks after we broke up?” Dean asks, then laughs bitterly. The sound itself makes Castiel want to curl up and make himself as small as possible, but it’s so uncharacteristic of Dean that he merely stares.

Immediately after he stops talking, Dean’s face morphs. Now all three of them look guilty, and Castiel sees Cassie and Dean open their mouths at the exact same time.

“That wasn’t fair of me—”

“I’m sorry I did that to you—”

They pause. Castiel had gotten the feeling last night that their relationship was several years in the past, but he realizes now that some of the wounds may have just scabbed over, never fully healing. Finally, Charlie plasters on a smile, something that seems to be rather common for her. Castiel admires that, for some reason. He likes that she’s always trying to lift people’s spirits, but understands that she’s a person too, and that she can’t always be there to serve other people’s needs. He thinks that he could be good friends with Charlie.

“Now that breakfast has been efficiently ruined, I think that we should go.” This is directed towards Cassie, who agrees quickly. Dean nods.

“We’ll talk, though,” he threatens, eyeing them both. Cassie musters up a grin as well.

“Wouldn’t dream of missing it,” she promises. They both scrape back their chairs, and on their way out they both kiss Dean on the cheek. Castiel watches, and very carefully doesn’t feel jealous. It doesn’t matter that Dean can accept their kisses, their feather-light touches across his shoulders and back, it’s not important that Dean can run his fingers through their hair and twine his fingers with theirs like he had with Charlie so many times during the movies yesterday. Castiel doesn’t care. He can’t want that, he can’t need that.

Charlie and Cassie leave with their final goodbyes, and then Dean and Castiel are alone again.

Dean is kind of furious. It’s not often that Charlie gets so drunk, and he knows it’s because she’s been hurt. He’s angry at Jo for doing that to her, and even though he knows that she probably had some sort of rationalization, it’s hard to forgive her when Charlie’s eyes are puffy and red when he wakes her up for breakfast and a post-alcohol vomit.

When he pulls out his phone though, he forces all thoughts of Jo to the back of his mind—he’d thought of this last night, listening to Castiel’s steady breathing from across the room. He knows that Castiel doesn’t like to be dependent on him, and he also knows that Cas doesn’t have a job, so this seems like the best thing Dean can do for him.

“Mornin,” Benny drawls when he picks up the phone. “Though I don’t see what you’re doin’ awake at this hour.”

Dean grins. Benny’s accent always relaxes him, even when his words aren’t the kindest. “I’ve got visitors, jerk. And I was wondering if I could do you a favor.”

“And here I was expecting the opposite. What can you do for me?” There’s a hint of a smile in Benny’s voice.

“I know you’ve been shorthanded at the restaurant lately, and I have a friend who’s looking for some work. You know, bussing tables, washing dishes. Anything he can do for you.” Dean knows it’s presumptuous, speaking for Castiel like this, but he wants to help. He needs to help Castiel, in a way he doesn’t quite understand.

“I knew it. This’s a favor for you,” Benny teases, before heaving a sigh. “Look, I can’t make any promises. You clearly don’t know whether or not he has any experience, and if he’s a shit employee I can’t take him. But if y’all stop by today we can talk, maybe work somethin’ out.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Benny,” Dean says earnestly. “He’s a good kid, I wouldn’t steer you wrong.”

“If you say so.” Benny hangs up without another word, like he always does. Dean knows he isn’t a fan of goodbyes.

“It’s a good thing, what you’re doing for him,” Cassie says from the doorway. Charlie nods from her position with her head between her knees, curled up like she’s in horrible pain. Her head is probably killing her. “He doesn’t seem like he’s very familiar with people being nice to him.”

“I know,” Dean sighs, running a hand through his hair as he puts the phone down and lights the burner under one of his skillets. “I’m trying to fix that.”

“Is there something wrong with him?” Charlie asks hoarsely. She probably doesn’t mean it like that, but Cassie frowns at her anyway.

“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Dean replies, defensive. “He’s just had a rough time, that’s all.”

“Probably an understatement,” Cassie says. Her phone buzzes in her hand, and she holds up a finger, asking them to be quiet. It’s probably work—Cassie’s been a journalist for years, and now that she’s risen to the top of the food chain Dean has come to realize that she never really leaves work. He couldn’t be prouder of her, though. They’d met back in college, when they were both struggling through their majors, though for different reasons. _We’ve made it so far_ , he thinks idly, letting his hands go on autopilot while he cooks.

After Dean hears the shower start from down the hall, he turns the burner down low so the food doesn’t burn, then makes his way down the hall to grab some of Castiel’s new clothes, knowing that he’s probably showering in Dean’s en suite. He picks out a white button-down and black slacks, knowing that it’s Benny’s uniform for all the employees, dishwashers or not. He leaves them neatly folded on his old bed, which is still rumpled and warm from the night.

Dean’s never going to understand Castiel. His face goes slack when Dean tells him about the job, but then he startles and looks like he’s about to cry. He stutters around his words and Dean wants nothing more than to pull him into a tight hug and assure him that everything is going to be okay. Instead, he very carefully adjusts his grip on the spatula and grins.

As soon as Charlie and Cassie are gone, bitter words melting on all their tongues, Dean hustles himself and Castiel into motion. Castiel doesn’t ask where they’re going as they climb into the car, Dean letting the engine warm itself up before rolling out into the storm.

It’s not snowing as badly today, but the wind howls against the car, beating at the windows until Castiel is huddled down in his seat, picking at his fingernails and staring determinedly at his hands. Even the low tunes of Zeppelin don’t comfort him, and Dean wonders how long he had been on the streets. If he’d had to survive last winter with no home, no family. The thought makes him ache.

Benny’s is still open, miraculously. Not a lot of people go out to eat in this weather, but Benny’s has a good enough reputation that it keeps the customers flowing. There’s only a couple cars in the lot, and Dean pulls into the closest one to the door. Castiel gasps when he opens the door, wrapping his thick new coat tight around his body and huddling in on himself. Dean can’t help but notice that it fits across his shoulders perfectly, and feels a small thrill of pride.

The restaurant is warm inside, flush with the bustling noise of people and the rich smells from the kitchen. From the corner of his eye, Dean sees Castiel relax, his whole body sagging and a slight grin appearing on his chapped lips. He feels his own lips twitch up, and then he sees Benny, wiping his hands on a rag as he moves toward them, a grin on his face.

“Hey, brother,” he greets warmly, wrapping Dean in a tight hug, which he returns enthusiastically. Benny smells like bread and spices and comfort, something Dean’s associated him with since college. They’ve both been so bust lately that they haven’t talked much, and Dean vows to himself to be more present, to be there for Benny. God knows he needs it.

“How’s Andrea?” He asks, pulling away to see Benny’s smile broaden.

“Hormonal and radiant,” he says, and Dean’s half-jealous, half-amused by how lovestruck he sounds.

“Well I hope you keep thinking that way, because soon enough she’s going to be threatening to kill you in your sleep. The twins might inherit her homicidal tendencies,” he jokes. Benny rolls his eyes.

“I keep tellin’ you, there’s not any twins. Just the one.” He sounds like one is going to be plenty for him. Dean raises his hands in mock surrender.

“If you say so, man. All _I’m_ saying is I’ve never seen a lady as big as her at three months.” Benny scowls, but he lets it drop.

“Is this the kid you were tellin’ me about?” He gives Castiel an appraising look, taking in the wild curl of his hair and his scuffed, falling-apart shoes.

“Yeah, this is Castiel.” Castiel himself fidgets, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Benny looks at Dean, one eyebrow raised, and gestures them towards the staircase at the back of the restaurant that leads first to his office and then the rest of Benny’s apartment. He sits them both down across from him at his desk and pulls out a small stack of paperwork, which gives Dean some hope.

“You ever worked in a restaurant, son?” Benny asks.

“Yes, sir,” Castiel answers, to Dean’s surprise. He hadn’t mentioned anything about that earlier, but then again, Dean’s never heard him willingly divulge anything from his past. Except for last night. “I worked in my mother’s restaurant until I was eighteen, waiting tables and washing dishes.”

“Huh. You got any kind of resumé?” Castiel blinks.

“No, sir.” Dean frowns. He hadn’t thought of that, but then again, this hasn’t been his most well thought-out endeavor as of late. Benny sighs, shaking his head. Dean’s stomach swoops, until he begins to speak again.

“Why don’t you stay for a shift, maybe scrub some dishes?” He offers to Castiel, who nods immediately. “If it goes all right, we’ll talk.”

“Thank you,” Dean says, relieved. Castiel smiles, not broadly, but Dean counts it as a win anyways. He lags behind as Benny shows Cas where to get an apron and waits as they disappear for a few moments. When Benny reemerges, he lays a hand on Dean’s shoulder.

“Is everything okay? You seem a little strange this morning.” Dean forces a smile.

“I just need to go talk to Jo for a bit. Everything should be fine.” He hopes, at least. Benny frowns.

“Somethin’ going on with her and Charlie?” Dean tries to hide his wince, but Benny seems to catch it, because he backs off. “No worries. Come back whenever you’re ready, I’ll keep the kid busy.”

“You’re a lifesaver Benny, honestly,” Dean says, grateful yet dreading what he has to go and do after this. Benny shakes his head solemnly. This isn’t news to him. “I’ll see you later.”

“Later, brother.”

This kitchen at Benny’s is familiar and safe. The smells are different from Castiel’s childhood; spices the cafe in Milwaukee had never use permeating the steamy air. He’s not getting paid much to plunge his gloved hands into scalding water and scrub dishes, but Castiel isn’t complaining, not even close. At this point, anything is better than being jobless, penniless.

Next to him, however, there’s Garth Fitzgerald III, who had introduced himself loudly and very enthusiastically when benny had brought Castiel into the kitchen. Castiel had barely managed to evade his handshake, which had looked equally enthusiastic.

“It’s great to have someone to do this with,” Garth says cheerfully, his hands scrubbing away under the water. He’s been talking almost non-stop since they began, and Castiel finds that he doesn’t mind it. He’s even starting to enjoy listening to Garth as their hands go on autopilot, and he doesn’t even have to say anything in response. It’s liberating and comforting all at once. “It’s kind of boring when there’s no one to talk to. At home, there’s always someone talking. Not that I’m complaining, not at all. This job is great. Benny’s great for letting me do this. I’ve got six little sisters, you know, and my mom isn’t so young anymore. Do you have any siblings, Castiel?”

Castiel nods in response and reaches for another pan, his damp hair falling into his eyes. Garth beams.

“The oldest girl, she’s nine, and she’s brilliant. I think she’s gonna go to college and everything! I never went, because we don’t have a lot of money, but I’ve been training with this dentist’s office part time and saving up my money, because I want the girls to go, too. Janie’s first violin in her orchestra and her teacher says that she could have a future in it!”

Garth sounds so proud that Castiel can’t stop the matching grin spreading across his face as he scrubs. He likes Garth, he decides. Garth evidently likes him too, because he chatters on happily until he seems to run out of things to say. At that, he turns to Castiel.

“So what about you? What are your siblings like?”

Castiel’s hands pause under the water. He glances down at them, at the ripple where his skin meets the layer of suds on top of the water, the browning water beneath licking at the rubber gloves.

“I don’t remember,” he says after a long pause, half-truthfully. “I haven’t seen them in a long time.”

“Oh,” Garth says, quietly. Like he’s sad all of a sudden. “I’m so sorry.”

Castiel can’t bring himself to force a smile, but he does look up at Garth, who towers above him by a good three inches despite his gangly frame. He’s almost as tall as Dean. “It’s okay.”

They both seem to understand that it’s not, and Garth is gracious enough to pick up the conversation, the topic turning to his endeavors at the local animal shelter. Castiel considers asking for the address, but before he can, Garth checks his watch and his shift is over. They part with amicable goodbyes, and Castiel tacitly dodges an attempted hug. And then he’s alone, in the bustling kitchen that seems to be in perpetual motion.

The kitchen practically hums, Castiel thinks, with its constant influx of chefs and waiters bearing trays and more dishes to pile up. Out of the corner of his eye, Castiel sees Benny standing over one of the stoves, frying something. A pregnant woman, bearing a ring on her finger and an apron around her waist, bustles in, pinning a few orders before leaning over and kissing Benny momentarily on his stubbled cheek. Castiel thinks he sees Benny press a hand to her hip lovingly, possessively, as he returns the kiss with one to her lips that lasts more than a moment. She pushes him away reluctantly and murmurs something in his ear that makes him laugh. Castiel turns back to his dishes, his hands stilling briefly.

He doesn’t want to think about the past. He doesn’t want to remember, right now or maybe ever again, but the memories press in on him like walls, suffocating and infuriatingly tangible. Castiel wonders how much Samandriel muse have grown, how he must be talking and walking. How much he’s learned without Castiel there. He wonders if their mother still picks him up, still grabs his arm when he strays too far in a crowd. Somehow, Castiel doubts it. There’s a sharp pang in his chest and then he’s blinking hard, trying to clear his suddenly blurry vision. Castiel glares down through the tears and starts to scrub viciously at the dish in his hand, viciously scraping away the food remnants until its porcelain surface is revealed. Castiel exhales, letting his eyes shut briefly, and forcibly clears his mind. He doesn’t want to think right now, doesn’t want to feel the pain clawing at him, begging him for scraps of attention that he refuses to give.

Castiel looses track of time. People keep pausing and piling up dishes next to him, so he keeps reaching for them. Scrub, rinse, stack, repeat. The monotony lulls him into a half-aware state, his feet sore in his battered, torn-up sneakers and his skin pruning under the rubber gloves. Castiel works. This is something he knows, at least. His mind stays stubbornly blank, until Benny taps him on the shoulder.

“Your ride’s here,” he says gruffly. There’s a crease in his brow and a frown in his voice, and Castiel wonders if he’s done something wrong, if Benny’s angry at him. Benny doesn’t say anything to indicate that, though, instead leading Castiel out of the kitchen and showing him where to place his dirty, soap-stained apron. When they get back into the main restaurant, Castiel sees Dean sitting at the main counter, next to the cash register. His fingers trail lightly over a half-empty glass of water in front of him, drops beading on the sides and dripping when Dean’s finger’s smear them away.

“Thanks, Benny,” he says, nodding at Castiel. He doesn’t move, and Castiel notices the redness around his eyes. His voice sounds hoarse, like he’s been yelling. Castiel briefly wonders what may be wrong, and he finds that he doesn’t like the idea of Dean being upset. He isn’t quite sure why—it’s not like they’re friends.

“It’s no problem,” Benny promises, leaning down to drab something from behind the counter. “Here. Figured you could use this.”

He holds out a large white pastry box. When Dean opens it, Castiel sees a bit of steam rise from the top. When Dean’s face comes into view again, he looks considerably happier, a smile breaking across his face.

“You’re too good to me,” he says to Benny, a laugh in his voice. Benny smiles, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and shakes his head.

“You look like you need it. Now go on, I have actual customers I need to get to.”

Castiel stands to the side as Benny pulls Dean into a hug, noticing the way Dean’s fingers dig into Benny’s shoulder and the way his body sags into the embrace. He looks away. This is not something he feels he should be privy to, even though they’re in public. Something about Dean’s friendship with Benny is based in the nonverbal, in mutual understandings that he can’t even come close to fathoming.

Dean is the first to pull away, and he leaves without saying goodbye. He doesn’t need to gesture for Castiel to follow him. It’s almost instinct, now.

  


Dean arrives at Jo’s apartment not long after he drops Castiel off at Benny’s, but he sits in the Impala for a long time before going in. The apartment she shares—shared—with Charlie is small and cramped, but Dean knows that the three of them made a lot of memories there. He’s angry at Jo, he thinks, even though he doesn’t want to be. She’s hurt someone he loves, but until he talks to her, Dean won’t know the full story. It might just be easier to leave and stay angry, but Jo is family.

Finally, he gathers his courage and wraps his scarf around his face, braving the bitter cold until he makes it into the lobby. This isn’t a fancy building, so he doesn’t bother trying to call up—the intercom only works half the time. Instead, he chooses to stomp up the drafty staircase, the one with peeling yellow wallpaper and the faint smell of mold that never quite seems to dissipate. Jo’s only three floors up, so it’s not that bad, but Dean still takes the steps quickly, mindful of his own breath puffing in the chilled air.

It takes Jo four minutes to open the door after he knocks. Even then, she only opens it until it reaches the end of the chain keeping it locked, and she stands there, glaring at Dean with red-rimmed eyes that don’t give him much hope.

“What do you want?” She asks rudely. Her eyes look bruised from sleep deprivation and her voice is rough, like she’s been screaming for the last few days.

“I’m here to talk,” Dean says. She scoffs—he may not be known for his emotional prowess, but Dean likes to think that he’s good at being mature sometimes. “Seriously. Let me in.”

“No,” she replies. Her voice is small and petulant, and Dean fixes her with his best older-brother glare. It doesn’t work. “It’s a mess in here. You should leave.”

“Charlie told me you’re moving back to Nebraska.” For a moment, Dean thinks Jo’s contemplating slamming the door in his face, but in the end she sighs and reaches to unlatch the door, letting it swing open to reveal her apartment and all its filthy glory.

The first thing Dean notices is that Jo probably hasn’t changed her clothes since Charlie left. She’s in a ratty pair of grey sweatpants that have stains every few inches, and an equally frumpy shirt that exposes her midriff and has holes in spots that Dean’s pretty sure it shouldn’t. The apartment is a mess too, clothes that are recognizably Charlie’s strewn all over the floor, her video game consoles unplugged and dumped in a heap on top of the biggest pile of clothes. It’s horrifying.

“I’m going back,” Jo admits. “Mom needs me, and it’s not like I fit in here. Charlie knew it was only a matter of time, and she doesn’t want me to go. You’re the one who told me that I shouldn’t let my girlfriends try and change my life decisions.”

She sounds defensive, like she knows what Dean’s going to say before he says it. She probably does, and just doesn’t want to hear it. Dean sighs. She starts to pace in the scarce floor space, her back turned on Dean like she’s going to ignore whatever he says.

“I meant that you shouldn’t let anyone control you, not that I need to tell you that. I didn’t mean that you should kick out your long-term girlfriend because she disagreed with you. Jo, she showed up on my doorstep on Friday with a bag of stuff and told me that you kicked her out without even having a conversation.”

“Well I’m not staying here!” Jo yells, her loose ponytail whipping her in the face as she turns sharply to face him. “So what was the point? I mean, she doesn’t want to move with me, and it’s not like I love her or anything, it’s not like we promised that we’d always stay together no matter what, and she was gonna just abandon me!”

Dean is shocked into silence. This isn’t what he had expected. He knows that Jo’s always been insecure about her relationships, and she and Charlie had a rough time in the early days of their own, but he didn’t know that her insecurities had persisted like this. Jo turns away from him again, one hand pressed to her trembling lips. Dean sags back against the small kitchen counter.

“I just think you guys should talk,” he offers quietly. “I think maybe you should take a shower and call Charlie and talk this out.”

“It’s not my fault,” Jo says miserably, even though it kind of is. It’s her fault and it’s Charlie’s fault and Dean totally gets it, Dean understands why Jo was scared enough to end it that abruptly. That doesn’t mean that he’s not still mad, but he understands a thing or two about where she’s coming from. Jo has always had an all-or-nothing type of personality, and as soon as she starts to feel unsupported in something, she jumps to the conclusion that everyone is against her. It’s not Dean’s favorite trait of hers, but it’s not his job to like her. It’s his job to love her, to help her, to try and stop her from fucking up the best thing she’s ever had completely.

“Go shower,” he says again. Jo glares at him, but after a long moment she stomps into her bathroom, and he hears water running a moment later. As soon as she shuts the door behind her, Dean pushes himself away from the counter and gets to work, grabbing Charlie’s clothes and belongings from the floor and folding them neatly on the kitchen table. There’s a few items he kind of wishes he didn’t have to see, but it makes him feel better to pack up Charlie’s things into two large duffel bags he finds stuffed between the edge of the counter and the fridge. Jo comes out of the bathroom a little more than half an hour later, her head wrapped in a towel, to find that most of the damage done to her apartment has vanished.

The couch is clean now, or as clean as Dean’s willing to try and get it. He had shaken the cushions free of crumbs and flipped them over so the slightly less stained parts were facing up, and now he settles in to wait while Jo looks around, until she’s inspected the bags Dean had left on the table and opened the fridge to check if he drank some of her beer. He didn’t—it’s not even ten in the morning.

Jo collapses onto the couch next to him as soon as she sees that it’s been cleared off, now clad in clean-looking flannel pants and another long-sleeved crop top which is, mercifully, free of holes. She’s not ready to leave the house by any means, but Dean’s willing to take what he can get. After laboriously dragging her favorite blanket around herself and reaching for a bottle of water he’d left for her on the coffee table, Jo settles back and looks at Dean like she’s waiting. He doesn’t intend to let her down.

“Why are you moving back to Nebraska?” Dean asks softly, trying to sound as sympathetic as possible. It’s not the first time she’s threatened it, but this time her intent seems to be the most founded. Jo huffs, letting her chin drop to her drawn-up knees.

“I got fired,” she admits quietly. “Boss said I was good, but not good enough, so they let me go. I know Mom’s always got work for me to do back home, and she’d let me live with her until I got back on my feet.”

Dean’s stunned. Jo’s been working for a private investigator for almost two years, and he knows she’d only been assigned a few cases on her own since being promoted. He knows how much her career means to her—losing her job must have shaken her to her core.

“I talked to Mom and she told me to come home, even though she was the one who told me to move out here with you in the first place. She said some rude things about Charlie, and I got pissed and hung up.” This doesn’t sound odd for Jo and Ellen, except for the bitterness in Jo’s voice.

“What changed?” Dean asks. From what he can tell, this isn’t really anything out of the ordinary. She shakes her head, taking another long drink from her water bottle. Dean sighs, again. “Do you want me to make you something to eat.”

Jo looks up at him like she’s ten again and just so happened to walk into the kitchen right before he started cooking. “Please?”

There’s not a lot to work with in the fridge, but Dean manages to scrape together a decent meal of turkey sandwiches and barbecue chips. He watches Jo scarf down her sandwich like it’s the first thing she’s eaten in days. It’ might be—neither she nor Charlie are very good at actually keeping themselves alive, and the state of their fridge tells Dean that no one’s been shopping in a very long time. Jo begins to speak again as she picks at her potato chips, her eyes never meeting Dean’s.

“I was looking for jobs during the day, because I hadn’t told Charlie yet, but a couple days ago Mom called again. I was out, I’d left my phone charging at home, and Charlie picked it up. Mom told her everything, and said something about how I must not trust her very much if I didn’t tell her about losing my job.” Jo’s eyes are wet now, and Dean leans over the couch to tuck her in tight against his side, like he used to when they were younger.

“I do trust her!” Jo exclaims wetly, like she’s scared he won’t believe her. “I just didn’t want her to be upset at me, you know? I thought I could figure everything out myself and she wouldn’t have to worry, but I came home and Charlie just started yelling at me. She was so mad, Dean, and I was mad too. She asked if I really was moving back and I said yes, and she got really quiet. She slept on the couch that night. So the next morning I told her to leave because if she couldn’t agree with me, then we were over anyways.”

“You didn’t try talking to her about this?” Dean asks, trying not to sound accusing. Jo doesn’t answer, which is an answer itself. “Listen, I think you should keep looking for work around here. Don’t let Ellen push you into anything you’re not totally sure about. Call Charlie, try explaining your side of things. I can’t promise you that she’ll listen right now, but if you want her back you need to start trying right now.”

“Who says I want her back?” Jo snaps.

“You don’t need to say it,” Dean replies, keeping his voice even. “It’s pretty damn obvious.”

Jo doesn’t reply for a long time, letting herself relax fully into Dean’s side. Eventually, she takes his hand, as if to reassure herself that Dean isn’t leaving. “Why do you always say what I need to hear?”

“I’ve known you for a while,” Dean says lightly. “And I do listen when you talk to me, you know.”

“Thanks,” she says. Dean doesn’t stick around for long after that, leaving with a quick text to Benny that he’ll grab Cas in a few minutes. He’s lost in his thoughts until Benny brings Castiel from the kitchen, his fingers pruned and his cheeks pink from the humidity, and until Benny passes him a warm, fresh-from-the-oven apple pie to take home. He and Castiel settle into the Impala’s seats, waiting for the engine to warm again before pulling out into the road. There’s not a lot of traffic right now, even though the snow has abated, and the white peace of urban Chicago calms something in Dean’s chest.

“Thank you for doing this for me,” Castiel says suddenly. He’s looking down at the warm pastry box in his lap, picking at one of his fingernails. “I didn’t think—you didn’t have to, I mean. Thank you for being so kind.”

It’s not the kind of thing Dean thinks he should deflect with a ‘you’re welcome’. Castiel looks uncomfortable voicing his gratitude, and Dean already knows that he doesn’t like asking for help. “I just want to help,” he replies finally, and that’s the end of the conversation.

Dean doesn’t think either of them know if that’s true or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about not updating last weekend, life kind of caught up with me. Follow me on tumblr at psychecas.tumblr.com for daily ficlets and updates on this story!! also shoutout to **astrotxt(.tumblr.com)** my amazing and wonderful flower and **apiaristcas(.tumblr.com)** my fave who helped edit parts of this chapter and give me some feedback.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaa guys i'm sorry this one is late!! i'm gonna try and get back on a more regular schedule now that Hell Week for school and swim is over, so another chapter this weekend?? maybe?? (i'm going to new york though so who knows)
> 
> anyway thanks so much for sticking with me this far. i know this might not be my best chapter ever, but i hoe you like it, for what it's worth

Castiel reads a lot. As soon as they get home he disappears into the library after changing into jeans and a t-shirt, and when Dean peeks in nearly an hour later, he’s curled up in the same recliner Dean found him in two days ago, the softest blanket Dean owns wrapped around him as he lies sideways on the chair, a book in his lap. Castiel doesn’t even notice that Dean’s watching, and it makes him feel a little creepy. But he can’t tear his eyes away from the bow of Castiel’s neck, his dark curls nearly to his shoulders as his eyes skim the page.

He’s beautiful, Dean notices, when there aren’t dark bags under his eyes, when the cut on his lower lip is almost healed over, when his brow furrows and his finger traces a line in the book over again, as if it could understand the words better than his eyes. Castiel doesn’t notice when Dean enters the room, and he doesn’t notice when he leaves, one hand curled around the nape of his own neck awkwardly. Dean tries to put those thoughts to the back of his mind, but he cares too much about Castiel to discard the way he looks fuller in Dean’s library. There’s a little more color in his cheeks, his eyes don’t look as flat. Dean thinks that he would buy Castiel every book in the world if Castiel would look at him with the kind of wonder he’d directed at the dozens of books littering the shelves in Dean’s apartment.

Dean isn’t sure that he knows exactly what’s going on in Castiel’s head when he settles down to read like this. He seems to immerse himself in the text, and even Dean’s soft footsteps on the carpet don’t rouse him from his stupor. He doesn’t bother shutting the door behind him when he retreats down the hall, the bare pads of his feet sliding across the carpet as he returns to his laptop and the paperwork spread out on top of the counter. Dean looks at it and suddenly wishes it didn’t exist.

It’s been less than three days since Dean went shopping, so the cupboards are still relatively full. It’s barely two at this point, but Dean starts taking stock anyway, letting his eyes drift over the untouched pie box in its corner of the fridge. He’d been tempted to cut out a large slice for himself as soon as he and Castiel piled out of the car, but had refrained. He isn’t sure when the idea of regular meals with Castiel had cemented itself in his brain, but now the thought of eating alone sits uncomfortably in the hollow of his chest.

“What are you making?” Dean has to physically repress a flinch when Castiel speaks, nearly twenty minutes after he’d last seen him in the library. He sets down the half-empty sack of potatoes he’d lugged out from the bottom drawer and turns to face Castiel.

“Chicken pot pie,” he replies. Castiel’s face scrunches up, one hand dangling at his side holding a book held open with one finger to mark his page.

“I thought Benny already gave you pie.” Dean shrugs.

“Nothing better than pie on pie. Hey, if you’re not doing anything, do you think you could help me with some of the vegetables?” Castiel shrugs back. Dean can’t tell if it’s an accident or a commentary.

“Sure. Let me put this down.” Dean doesn’t actually own many bookmarks, but Castiel grabs a stray pen off one of Dean’s hastily stacked piles of paper and sticks it between the cover of his novel. Dean catches a glimpse of the title as Castiel begins to wash his hands.

“You read Vonnegut?”

“No, never. This was one of the most worn out books on the shelf though. I figured that it couldn’t be too bad.” Dean wonders if he’s already finished the Austen novel he fell asleep on the couch with. He probably has—Castiel strikes him as a fast reader. _Fahrenheit 451_ lies face-up on the countertop.

“That copy was a gift from the only high school teacher I ever liked,” Dean admits. It’s nearly twenty years old by now, and it’s easy to see. The front cover is hanging on by less than an inch, and Dean can see the endless dog-ears and post-its that are color coded with some system he probably forgot after he finished sticking them in. “If you don’t read Vonnegut, what do you read?”

It’s an innocuous question. Castiel seems to like those. Dean’s noticed that he shies away from larger things, questions about his family or his situation, but smaller things are easy to pull out of him. His favorite color (green), his allergies (shellfish and peanuts), and the like.

“A lot of classics,” Castiel says offhandedly. Dean gestures toward the pile of things that need chopping—carrots, onions, potatoes, chicken. Castiel examines the knife Dean hands him and then grabs the first carrot. “Mostly religious works, or Austen or poetry. At one point, I would read anything I got my hands on.”

“I get that,” Dean remarks, choosing to ignore the melancholy that reverberates through Castiel’s tone. “Right before I got adopted, I spent some time in a correctional home with a guy named Cain, who had the biggest library I’d ever seen. We were supposed to be doing chores around the land, but I spent all my time holed up in there. Right about the time I got most of my copies of Vonnegut, too.”

Castiel’s knife slows while Dean speaks. He doesn’t look up, but his fingers grip the halved carrot with an intensity that Dean only vaguely recognizes.

“You were adopted?” His voice is tight. Dean hadn’t mentioned it on accident. He knows how much it must take for Castiel to stay here, to accept his help and live under his roof without a little trust between them. Dean wants to balance things out between them, and he doesn’t want Castiel to be afraid of him.

“After a while, yeah,” Dean replies. “I spent most of my preteen years being bounced around in the foster system. It’s where I met Charlie for the first time, actually. But when I was fifteen, I finally got picked up. Everyone thought I was a lost cause, but Bobby didn’t give up on me.”

Castiel finally looks up through his bangs at Dean, his fingers dicing masterfully in a way that implies experience. He doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t ask any more questions, either. Dean is relieved. He doesn’t think that he’d prepared himself enough to talk about the before just yet.

“Were you adopted?” Dean guesses, going out on a limb. Castiel pauses again, two more carrots left to go. This time it doesn’t last for long, and he looks down at the cutting board again.

“No,” he finally says. Dean’s no expert, but he thinks Castiel is telling the truth. He doesn’t think that Castiel has ever lied to him, in fact. It’s somewhat unerring. “No, I wasn’t.”

Now isn’t the time to press either of them for answers. Dean is grateful when they lapse into silence, Castiel setting aside the bundle of carrot slices and reaching for the first onion. He looks rattled, and Dean notices his fingers shaking, contained but forceful like Castiel is trying to hold them back. He doesn’t have time to say anything before Castiel is gripping the onion and cutting into it, and then Dean sees his hand jerk and the knife twist and then all of a sudden _red_.

Castiel cries out, sharp, and then the knife is clattering to the floor and Dean lurches toward him without thinking, barely noticing the way Castiel flinches back so violently his back hits the refrigerator. He draws up short, taking in Castiel and his pale face and his wide eyes, the side of his hand completely cut open and cradled with his other.

“Shit,” Dean swears, when he sees the first few tears. Castiel whines in pain, his eyes closing and his head thudding back against metal. “Listen, stay here, I’m gonna go get some bandages.”

“It stings,” Castiel chokes out, squeezing his eyes shut tighter.

“I know,” Dean says. His voice is shaking. “I know, try and run it under some water. I’ll be right back, I promise.”

The first aid kit is just down the hall, under the counter of the spare bathroom, and Dean has it in seconds. He returns to see Castiel gingerly rinsing off his cut, which is both longer and deeper than Dean had initially thought. He swears again internally and approaches Castiel, who’s shaking so badly that Dean wants to reach out a hand to steady him.

“Here,” he says gruffly. He’s shaken, but right now Dean’s first priority is Castiel. “Let me wrap it. I think you need stitches, but I can cover it until we can get to the ER.”

“No,” Castiel says. “I—I can do it, just give me—” The fingers of his good hand slip on the first aid kit, and he can’t even get it open once Dean’s set it down on the counter. Blood is welling up in his opposite palm again and spilling out onto the counter, no matter how hard Castiel presses on it. After less than a minute, Dean gets fed up.

“Let me do it,” he insists. Castiel shakes his head and tries to unlatch the box again. Tears are still streaking down his face and his breath is jagged, but he doesn’t look up at Dean. “No. Stop it. Let me help you.”

“I can do it,” Castiel says again, but this time he sounds broken. This time, he doesn’t try and tug the kit away when Dean reaches for it. Dean takes a deep breath and unlatches it, hoping that he won’t hurt Castiel any more than he has to. Any more than he already has.

The cut stings. More than that, it _hurts_. Castiel isn’t used to sensation this stark, and as he clutches his writs uselessly he tries to stop feeling, to stop registering the warmth of his palm against his wrist and the slickness of his own blood gushing out onto everything. He watches warily as Dean grabs gauze and disinfectant from the first aid kit and braces himself.

At the first swipe of the disinfectant pad, Castiel flinches. It’s not so much the pain, though it stings more than he’d anticipated, as it is the warm weight of Dean’s fingers against his bloody wrist. Castiel wants to throw up, he wants to wrench himself away, but the counter is painted red and his hand is slowly going numb and he knows he has to trust Dean with this. The pressure of fingertips is gone almost as soon as it appears, and then Dean’s back with the gauze and Castiel looks away before he can see the pity as Dean grabs him again.

It’s been so long. It’s been so long since anyone touched Castiel without wanting to hurt him, it’s been so long since he’s felt the warm, comforting pressure of _touch_ and as his wound gets wrapped in layer upon layer of staining cloth he chokes back a sob. Castiel can’t stand this, Dean’s thumb stroking softly along his wrist and down to the heel of his palm as if he’s trying to lend comfort. Castiel tries to flex his fingers and he can’t. Dean’s hand is still on him as he tapes the end of the gauze and Castiel is still looking at the ground, unable to contain the tears.

“Come on,” Dean murmurs. He’s not pulling away and a voice yells in Castiel’s head, tells him to shove Dean away and run and protect himself and for Dean to _stop touching him_ but he can’t and his head is spinning and nothing makes _sense_. “We have to get you to the hospital.”

Castiel lets himself be tugged gently into the car, but he doesn’t look up from his blood-stained lap and the tips of fingers he can’t feel from behind the incision and the wrapping. He feels the lurch of the breaks and feels his stomach turn over. The thought of the hospital terrifies him—Castiel’s skin is crawling and over sensitized and he thinks that if anyone else touches him he’s going to scream.

“Cas,” Dean says urgently, and Castiel realizes that this must be his third or fourth time saying it. There are heavy creases between Dean’s brows and Castiel frowns in sympathy. He doesn’t like that Dean’s worried, doesn’t like that Dean has enough attachment to him to care. “We’re here.”

Sure enough, the hospital looms over them, sunlight reflecting off the dozens of windows. Castiel nods. He doesn’t know how he’s going to pay for this. He lets Dean open his door and steps out obediently, but when Dean turns to the entrance, Castiel finds himself working on muscle memory as his good hand flies to the bottom of Dean’s sleeve, gripping it so tightly that the pads of his fingers turn pink in the chilled air. Dean turns back, but not with enough movement to dislodge him.

“Are you okay?” He asks, which is ridiculous. The gauze on his wrist is beginning to soak through with blood and his wrist still burns from where Dean had gripped it, and Castiel feels sick but the thick wool of Dean’s jacket is grounding him. The rough strands press against his fingers and he rubs it softly when he nods and follows Dean into the lobby.

It takes a long time for them to get called into urgent care, after they’ve waited in the lobby for nearly an hour. At this point, Castiel’s hand is totally numb and so is he, listless and unresponsive whenever Dean tries to make conversation. The doctor who takes them to one of the curtain-veiled beds looks tired. She flips through the paperwork and smiles wearily at Castiel when she’s done.

“It says there that you don’t have health insurance, Mr. Novak,” she says kindly. Castiel nods, ignoring the way his discarded name rolls off her tongue like it has any relation to him.

“I can’t afford it,” he says when she waits for him to elaborate. Dean’s sitting next to the bed that Castiel is perched on, and his fingers twitch a few inches away from Castiel’s thigh. “It doesn’t matter. Is my hand going to be okay?”

The doctor frowns and sets down the chart. She doesn’t ask before she reaches out to grab his arm, and Castiel represses his violent flinch, choosing instead to dissociate himself from the latex-clad fingers gripping his arm firmly. Through hazy vision he sees Dean’s concerned expression, the way his gaze darts between the doctor’s fingers and Castiel’s face. If he could through his self-imposed isolation, Castiel would reassure him with empty words.

The doctor unwraps Dean’s careful bandaging, her brow creasing when she sees the cut underneath.

“Oh dear,” she says. “This is going to need stitches as soon as possible.”

Now that it’s exposed to the air, Castiel can see how deep the cut is. It still stings, and as blood wells up in it again Castiel can feel pins and needles in his fingers. The doctor cleans his wrist again, the stinging slowly becoming more pronounced. Finally, she numbs it with a painful shot that Castiel isn’t sure he really feels, because he’s too concentrated on the burning imprints of her fingers. He doesn’t want her touching him, but he does want to be able to use his hand at some point. He watches Dean watch him, instead of watching his hand get sewn back together.

He hates hospitals. He hates doctors and their prying fingers and their prescriptions. Castiel hadn’t stepped foot in a hospital for years before this, and he hopes that he doesn’t have to again any time soon, except to get the stitches out. The doctor tells him a week. A week of keeping the stitches dry and clean. A week of no work, of staying in Dean’s home longer than he has to.

Sitting numbly on the hospital bed, Castiel barely notices when Dean starts to talk to the doctor. Everything sounds muffled, like he’s lying on the bottom of a pool and everyone is shouting at him. He reaches over and grips Dean’s sleeve with his good hand and it doesn’t help ground him, but it’s something to hold on to.

Dean finally leads Castiel out of urgent care, and it isn’t until they’re back in the car does Castiel realize that Dean’s speaking to him. He tries to concentrate, to hear the words as anything other than meaningless sounds.

“...what that was about,” Dean’s saying. “Cas? Are you listening?”

“I think so,” Castiel replies. His hand is starting to ache again. He lets his head drop back against the leather seats and looks up at Dean. He doesn’t feel like a real person yet. He still feels like he’d back in that white room with its white sheets and blank curtains, and there are still hands crawling over his skin.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Dean’s voice is terse, but the look on his face tells Castiel that he’s not angry. He decides to go with the simplest version. Dean isn’t worth going through nineteen years of his life story.

“I didn’t want her to touch me.” Simple, true. Dean’s knuckles turn white on the steering wheel.

“I noticed.” It’s not unkind, but Castiel bristles at the words anyway. “You didn’t seem to want me touching you either.”

“I didn’t,” Castiel repeats. Dean doesn’t say anything else. It’s strange, Castiel thinks, how just a few hours ago they were relaxed in each others’ presence. He was curled up in Dean’s library not long ago, peacefully coexisting with the mystery down the hall, and now they’ve come to this—tense silences and cold air between them. Castiel doesn’t think he likes it.

When they get home, Dean doesn’t let Castiel retreat back into his bedroom. Instead, he corners him in the mudroom, because he doesn’t think either of them is ready to see the blood-stained kitchen yet. There’s a disquieting sort of emotion building in the back of his throat, and Dean doesn’t want to call it anger but it’s something close. It’s enough that he tastes copper on his tongue when he opens his mouth, intending to order Castiel to _look at him_ , but then Castiel does it of his own free will.

He still looks distant, but when Castiel meets his gaze it’s with resolve behind it. Dean doesn’t know how to explain everything that he’s feeling—he’s confused and upset and hurt for reasons he can’t quite place, and he doesn’t think that Castiel would understand. He doesn’t say any of the wild things that are running through his mind, and chooses the safest route.

“I’m going to pay for your hospital visit,” he says. “For the stitches, everything.”

“Why?” Castiel asks. He doesn’t bother to disguise the exhaustion in his tone. “I’m nothing to you.”

It hits Dean like a punch to the gut. It should be true. Dean has known Castiel for maybe a week, and there’s no reason he should feel like this, like Castiel is his responsibility or his to take care of. It’s not about the money, because God knows Dean has enough money to pay another hospital bill, it’s about the way his stomach turns when he thinks of Castiel walking out of his house, when he thinks of Castiel’s bedroom empty.

“No, you’re not,” Dean says, raw and honest because that’s the only thing he knows how to be right now. “But you have to give me some reason to trust you. Even if you’re not gonna stick around after the stitches come out, I’d rather know who I’m living with.”

Castiel regards him with weary eyes. He seems to be more present now but Dean doesn’t trust it, he remembers the look in Castiel’s eyes while the doctor sewed him up, remembers the violent and sharp flinch when he’d reached out to bandage Castiel’s cut. He doesn’t know whether to assume the reaction is from Castiel’s time on the streets or something worse.

Castiel doesn’t respond, just keeps staring at Dean like he’s trying to figure something out.

“If I don’t tell you, are you going to make me leave?” Dean doesn’t even think about his answer.

“No,” he says, and the crease between Castiel’s brows deepens. Dean hates that kindness is such a foreign concept to him, hates that he may be the first person to offer Castiel a home.

“I’m going to bed,” Castiel says. His gaze drops and he toes off his boots, leaving them on the rack next to the door. He turns back when he’s halfway across the threshold, and the light from the kitchen behind him casts his face in shadow and highlights the angle of his cheekbones and the bags under his eyes. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

It could be an empty promise, but as Dean listens to the padding of Castiel’s footsteps as they fade away, he doubts it. Castiel has never lied to him. Dean shakes his head to try and clear it. It’s only five in the evening, but he’s weary. His limbs feel sluggish and his spine bows under his own weight, but after he sheds his own boots, Dean doesn’t go to bed. Instead, he takes disinfectant and stain remover and scrubs the kitchen raw, until there’s a pile of blood-stained paper towels stacked in the trash can and the kitchen counter is sparkling.

Somehow, it doesn’t feel like enough. Dean goes to bed but doesn’t sleep, tossing and turning as he remembers that just last night, Castiel had been curled up on the opposite side, his face to the window and the streetlight that Dean abhors casting light over his face.

He kind of regrets not sitting Castiel down and dragging his story out of him, but guilt is gnawing away at him from the inside anyway. Dean _knows_ that Castiel isn’t comfortable with sharing his past, but the doubts that have been slowly making themselves known in the back of Dean’s mind keep resurfacing, reminding Dean that this is his _home_ and he has a right to know who he’s sharing it with.

It doesn’t make him feel any better.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when Dean wakes up the sun is bright in his eyes. He stumbles out into the kitchen, intending to down a few cups of coffee, but stops short when he sees Castiel sitting at the kitchen table, his back to Dean, his body hunched over. The bow of his spine spells out defeat, and through his sleep-haze, guilt settles heavy into Dean’s stomach. The coffeepot is warm, and he pours himself a mug, cupping it in his chilled hands and leaning against the counter. He doesn’t look at Castiel, and he doesn’t speak.

“I don’t want to leave,” Castiel admits, and Dean rethinks his assessment. Castiel doesn’t sound defeated. There’s iron in his voice, despite its soft volume, and he says it like he’s daring Dean to make him go. “I—I like it here, and I like staying with you, and I like the way your friends act like it’s not strange that I’m here.”

Dean lets him talk. It doesn’t seem right to interrupt, not when he’s the one who asked for this.

“I haven’t been to a hospital in years. My mother wouldn’t let any of us go, not unless something really bad happened. The one time I went, I had pneumonia, and she kept trying to get the doctor to stop touching me. I tried too, I kept pulling away from him when he tried to take my temperature, and I screamed when he tried to give me a shot.” Castiel takes a long pull from his coffee mug and sighs. Dean knows from the doctor’s charts that Castiel Novak is nineteen years old, due to turn twenty in a month, but right now Castiel looks years older.

“She forced me into the bathroom when we finally came home with the antibiotics,” Castiel says, and Dean’s stomach turns, immediately jumping to all the worst conclusions. “She made me stand in the shower and scrub myself behind the curtain until she was happy that the doctor hadn’t left any stain on me. That Sunday she hauled us all to confession and she sat with me in the booth and made me tell the priest what I’d done, only I didn’t know what it was that I was supposed to be apologizing for.”

“I was eight.” Castiel sounds bitter and dark, and his back twitches like he’s fighting the urge to fling his mug across the room. Dean’s shoulders tense in sympathy. “And I couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched me.”

He lapses into silence, and Dean sets his mug down on the counter. The click of ceramic against marble makes Castiel flinch. Dean doesn’t know what to say. The thought of growing up like that, physically isolated from anyone and anyone, makes him feel sick.

“I’m not an addict or anything,” Castiel finally says. “I wouldn’t stay here if I were. I don’t have anyone who cares about me enough to try and track me down. I’ve been on my own for a long time.”

“You don’t have to be,” Dean says quietly. Outside, one of his neighbors’ cars begins to wail. Castiel’s hair falls into his eyes when he turns in his chair enough to meet Dean’s gaze. Finally, Dean feels that he’s allowed to move, and he slides into the chair next to Castiel, his hand palm-up on the table. Castiel doesn’t take it, but his fingers twitch just enough that Dean knows that he’s thinking about it.

“I want to stay,” Castiel whispers. His bandaged hand lies flat on the table, their fingertips a few inches apart.

“You can,” Dean promises. Even if he wanted to, he could never make Castiel leave. “You can stay here for as long as you want.”

Castiel nods, but he doesn’t look up again. He looks like he wants to say something else. Dean doesn’t ask what it is, and instead waits with his hand still flat on the table.

“She hit me, before I left.” He’s still whispering, but this time Castiel meets Dean’s gaze. “I was trying to sneak in to pack my things, and on my way out she came out of her bedroom and started screaming at me. She woke everyone up, and when she was done screaming the hit me. I didn’t expect it. She’d never touched me, not that I could remember, and all of a sudden my cheek was bleeding from her wedding ring and she looked like she was going to throw up.”

He breaks off abruptly, and Dean nearly has to take his hand off the table, because the urge to grab Castiel and hug him is so strong he can’t stand it. He has to show Castiel that he won’t, though. Trust goes both ways.

“Are you okay?” Dean asks, and it’s the stupidest question in the world but he forces it out with choked breath and desperate hope. Castiel blinks hard, and a single tear streaks down the side of his face. His eyes are red, his lower lip is trembling.

“I don’t know,” he says, his voice shattering. “I don’t know.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me preface this by saying: I am SO sorry. I promise to never go this long without an update again, and after this week I should be able to get back to bi-weekly updates. In June, if this fic lasts that long, I might get back to weekly updates. I'm sorry to leave you guys hanging like that, but I still don't have much to show for 3 weeks of work. I'm still figuring out how to hit some major plot points I already have planned.
> 
> This chapter is a bit of a filler, but hopefully it gives more insight into the characters and how the last chapter affected Dean and Cas??

Castiel avoids Dean for the rest of the day. He feels raw inside, chafed in uncomfortable places he hasn’t thought about in years. He wraps himself up in a sweater he finds in the bottom drawer of the dresser in his room— _his room_ —and the sweatpants Dean had bought him, and he locks the bedroom door.

He doesn’t hear Dean rise from the kitchen table for a long time. Down the hall, a door clicks shut softly, and Castiel can breathe again. His bandaged hand throbs and aches and he digs his thumb into the juncture just above the cut and reminds himself that this is real, that he’s not back in that cold sterile house. He has a pile of books stacked next to his bed and a soft blanket thrown over him that traps the fleeting warmth in a way that lends security to whatever _this_ is.

Castiel doesn’t pick up a book, he doesn’t switch on the tiny television that sits forlornly on the top of the dresser. Instead, he sits cross-legged on the bed and stares at the pattern of the quilt and tries to stop thinking. It’s overwhelming enough that Dean had listened to him, had told him to stay, but all Castiel can focus on is the way Dean’s open palm had looked, face-up on the table, his fingers spread and inches apart from Castiel’s own.

It’s frightening how much Castiel had wanted to let his hand slide those inches, had wanted to press the tips of his fingers to Dean’s, and then he thinks about the endless parade of _hands_ and _lips_ and everything else that he’d had to tolerate in that awful year, and for a long moment Castiel thinks he’s going to throw up. He drags the small trash can over to him and dry heaves over it, his hands clenched around the rim as he tries to force the memories away, tries not to think about the curl of his mother’s sharply manicured fingernails into the collar of his shirt.

He doesn’t actually throw up, but it’s a near thing.

Castiel doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he wakes up the daylight is soft behind his curtains and he’s curled up on his side, bandaged hand tucked protectively against his stomach. His mouth is dry and tastes of stale coffee. Behind his door, low voices carry down the hallway. He can’t make out who they belong to or what they’re saying, and it takes Castiel a while to sit up and orient himself.

A brief glance into the mirror on the dresser tells him that his hair is flat on one side and wildly curly on the other, the strands hanging nearly to his shoulders. Castiel doesn’t look at himself for longer than he has to to make himself presentable, because that’s one habit he’d never quite gotten around to unlearning on the streets.

When the _click_ of his door unlocking echoes down the hall, the voices stop. Castiel emerges into the kitchen to see Dean and a woman curled up together on the couch, a blanket covering both their laps and a mug of tea cradled in the woman’s hands. She looks at Castiel with red-rimmed eyes and scoffs.

“Doesn’t look like much.” Dean glares at her, but it’s ineffective when both she and Castiel can see the way his hand is laid on top of hers, gentle and supportive. Castiel averts his gaze.

“Don’t be rude,” Dean warns, like he knows that she’s going to be anyway. “Jo, this is Castiel. Cas, this is my sister, Jo.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Castiel offers quietly, clearing his throat to try and smooth out his voice. He’s suddenly very aware of the fabric creases along his cheek and the soft, worn sweatshirt he’s wearing. Jo doesn’t look much better, but her gaze makes him feel judged.

“I was just about to order some food,” Dean says, when both Castiel and Jo fail to break the silence. “Is there anything you want, Cas?”

Castiel’s first instinct is to say _no_ , because it’s probably the polite thing to do and he wouldn’t want to bother Dean anyway, but then he remembers Dean’s fingers on the kitchen table and his careful questions about Castiel’s favorite foods and colors. Dean cares, he reminds himself, even if he doesn’t fully believe it.

“No Mexican food?” He offers tentatively. In his experience, Chicago’s limited selection of both Del Taco and Taco Bell have been massively disappointing. He thinks back to a summer spent in California and then shuts the memory down. “Anything else is fine.”

“We’re getting Thai,” Jo announces, already reaching for her phone. She blinks hard while she looks down at it, and Castiel notices her damp cheeks and doesn’t say a word. He perches on a stool at the island and lays his palms flat against the cool marble. “Do you know what you want, Castiel?”

He shrugs at her cold tone. She doesn’t seem to like him very much, he notes, but maybe that has something to do with Charlie. “I don’t care. Order for me if you want.”

Jo scoffs _again_ , but dials the phone and rambles off a long list of dishes seemingly from memory. She pauses to laugh at something the server says, and Castiel assumes that she must be one of their more frequent customers. Her mug of tea sits half-empty on the coffee table, and she’s shaken Dean’s hand off from on top of her own. She sets the phone down and looks pointedly at Dean, who just shakes his head.

“You’re just ordering so much because you know I’m going to pay for it.”

“Damn right,” she says smugly. Under the blanket, her leg moves sharply and Dean winces, reaching his hand down to rub at where she kicked him. Castiel suppresses a smile. “You’re the one earning the big bucks in this family.”

This piques Castiel’s attention. He has no desire to be part of this conversation, but he still doesn’t know as much about Dean as he would like. All her really knows is that Dean wears suits to work, and that he must make a lot of money, if what Jo’s saying is true.

“Please,” Dean laughs, but he doesn’t pretest further. Instead, he reaches for the TV remote and flicks the set on, flipping through channels until he finds something satisfactory. Castiel perches on one of the stools at the island and watches Jo glare at Dean from inches away on the couch. They don’t resume their conversation, though, and Castiel assumes that it’s something that they don’t feel comfortable discussing around him. It’s not a pleasant feeling, but he understands.

“Hey Cas,” Dean says after a while. Castiel looks up from where he’s been picking restlessly at his own fingernails. They’re bitten down to the quick, and a scab is starting to form from where he’d mistakenly bitten down too far several days ago. “Should we change your bandage?”

Jo looks up with interest, and Castiel nods reluctantly. The doctor had told him to change the dressing daily, but he’d rather not have to look to the stitches in his hand, or have to let Dean unwrap them again.

“I guess,” he says, reluctantly.

“What did you _do_?” Jo exclaims when she gets a good look at his wrapped hand. Castiel grimaces.

“I tried cooking.” Jo snorts. Dean rises from the couch, dumping his half of the blankets on Jo’s head unceremoniously as he goes. Castiel almost thinks that he’s going to reach for the bandages right here, and he draws his hand into his own chest protectively. The look on Dean’s face is a little crumbled, his mouth not quite as stoic as Castiel thinks it was a moment ago, and he relaxes his posture, just barely.

Dean holds out his hand, as if to lead him away, and Castiel pauses for only a moment before reaching out to grip the underside of Dean’s sleeve. He doesn’t watch Dean’s face, but pads after him down the hall and into the master bathroom when Dean starts to tug him along. He very carefully avoids Jo’s searching look.

Castiel keeps his eyes on the floor the whole time spent changing his bandage. It doesn’t take very long, but it’s enough that by the time Dean releases his wrist, Castiel is shaking. It reminds Dean eerily of the way he’d reacted to the doctor, of his violent flinch every time Dean had extended a hand to him.

Dean counts it as a win when Castiel doesn’t jerk his hand away immediately after he’s done, but the look on his face makes his heart twist.

“Does it hurt?” Dean asks, because the puckered, wrinkled skin around the stitches doesn’t look pleasant. His thumb is pressed gently to one of the veins in Castiel’s wrist, and he can feel it flex when he twitches his fingers.

“Less than it did when it was still bleeding,” Castiel admits, which isn’t saying much. Dean stifles a laugh. “But moving it tugs.”

He doesn’t say that it’s better like this, Dean notes. He’s no stranger to stitches himself, but he can’t imagine the tugs against his skin if he’d been so used to feeling nothing there, no touch. It’s uncomfortable and disquieting and it makes him ache for Castiel.

“Do you want me to bring your food to your room?” Dean asks. He’d seen the looks Castiel had been throwing at Jo, and it’s obvious that he’s not comfortable around her yet, not like he was with Cassie. Castiel pauses and blinks.

“I don’t want to fall asleep again.” Dean would argue—Cas’s cough has nearly gone, and his eyes look less bruised underneath than Dean’s ever seen them, but he understands. Something about losing time in the middle of the day has always messed with him, and even if he can steel hear Cas pattering around the house at night, he knows the comfort of falling into a routine. So he nods and lets go of Cas’s wrist, taping on a new bandage as carefully as he can. He doesn’t like the wince this elicits, but he knows there’s nothing he can do about it now.

When they return to the living room, Jo is still sitting on the couch, but now there’s several bags of takeout on the coffee table in front of her. She pats the cushion next to her invitingly, so Dean gingerly moves aside the small mountain of tissues that’s accumulated in his absence and reclaims his seat. Behind him, Cas perches on the stool that he seems to like, grabbing his food on the way. Jo doesn’t try to talk any more, and instead they all tuck into their dinner without much conversation.

Dean’s halfway through his curry when his phone rings. He picks it up after checking the ID, debating whether or not he should leave Jo for this.

“Hey, Cassie,” he greets, and watches Cas’s head perk up from his noodles in interest. He’s not sure what Cassie said to him to make the kid like her so much, but whatever it was, he’s glad.

“Hey,” she says, and she sounds exhausted. “I just thought I should let you know that Charlie’s on her way to her apartment to pick up her stuff. She needs to know if Jo’s going to be there.”

Upon hearing her name, Jo finally looks up from her food. Her eyes narrow, and she glares at Dean long enough that Cassie has to repeat herself because he hasn’t answered.

“Yeah, um. No, she’s with me right now,” he replies, and can practically hear Cassie’s frown as he surreptitiously puts her on speaker.

“Can I talk to her?”

“No, because she’s not really in any state for you to be yelling at her right now.” Jo’s glare intensifies, but her fingers fidget and she reaches for the box of tissues. Slowly, she starts tearing one into tiny pieces.

“I’m not going to yell at her,” Cassie says, exasperated. “I just want to see how she’s doing. I’ve only gotten Charlie’s side of the story, you know?”

Dean raises his eyebrow at Jo, who just shrugs.

“Hey, Cassie,” she says finally, sounding as cocky as ever despite the furrow between her brows.

“Hey, how are you doing?” Cassie asks, and Dean is suddenly reminded why Cassie is their ‘break-up friend’—her voice is soothing even over the phone, and holds no trace of judgement.

“I don’t know,” Jo says, and then Dean is reminded exactly _why_ he and Jo don’t try and fix each others’ problems—they do it so much better with other people. She sounds so relaxed all of a sudden, so much more than when she had been talking to him. It stings a little, but Dean knows that they’ve never really been close enough for this to be a possibility. Maybe if they’d gotten along better as teenagers, he thinks.

Jo picks up his phone and turns off the speaker, pressing it to her ear as she starts to worry her thumbnail between her teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees Castiel eating again, because he’s never seen Cas leave a plate of food in front of him for longer than the shortest amount of time he can eat it in. He treats every meal like Dean’s going to take it away from him if he doesn’t eat fast enough, and Dean’s gut twists, because no one should ever have to be that hungry.

When Jo steps into the hallway and shuts the door of Dean’s bedroom behind her, Dean stands and takes his bowl with him, sliding onto the stool next to Castiel.

“Your friends seem complicated,” Castiel finally offers. Dean shrugs.

“Jo’s my sister. It’s my job to be there for her, but it’s not something I’m great at, you know? We’re all pretty close, and Cassie’s probably closer to her than I am.” It’s hard not to feel guilty about that, sometimes, but he’s come to accept it. Castiel nods.

“Was she adopted too?” Dean had almost forgotten he’d told Cas that. He blinks, and Cas’s cheeks flush slightly, like he’s embarrassed. “Sorry, I know it’s not something—”

“It’s fine,” Dean says, too quickly. Cas had bared his soul to him this morning, and he might as well return the favor. It seems almost like he owes Castiel, now. “She’s not. Her mom remarried when Jo was ten, years after her husband died, and a few months later they adopted me. I was fourteen then, and Jo and I didn’t get along at all. We didn’t even talk regularly until she moved here from Kansas right after I graduated college. We’ve kind of fallen in with the same crowd, but she and I aren’t as close as I think most real siblings are.”

Castiel hums a little in the back of his throat and sets down his fork.

“Some of my siblings were adopted or fostered. Every few months, it seemed like we had another kid in the house, even if my mother wasn’t pregnant. She’d hold the babies and the youngest ones, but she’d stop once they got older. I always wondered how she managed it, keeping everyone so separate in such a tiny house.

“I was never close to more than a few of my siblings, just the ones who were close to my age. I wasn’t adopted, or if I was, no one’s ever told me. I don’t think how close you are to your siblings has anything to do with whether you were born to the same mother, though.” He sounds sad.

“I had a brother, once,” Dean offers. “We got put into the system when I was six, and he was this chubby little two year old, and I wouldn’t talk. So he got adopted right off the bat, and I haven’t seen him since. I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for him.”

Castiel looks up, and Dean can tell that he wants to ask. But if Castiel is allowed his secrets then Dean is allowed his, and Jo could walk through the door at any moment and shatter this carefully cultivated trust. So instead he turns back to his curry and tries to stifle a smile when Castiel finishes his own noodles and immediately starts sneaking bites from Dean’s meal, tentative before the first try but laughing by the third, when Dean tries to end him off with nothing but his fork.

“Cute,” Jo says from the doorway. Next to Dean, Castiel freezes. She shakes her head, and Dean notices that she’s back in her puffy jacket, her gloves clutched tightly in one hand. “I’m going home. It was nice to meet you, Cas.”

Dean wants to ask if she’s sure that’s a good idea, but that would only make Jo mad. She tosses his phone at him and Dean barely manages to catch it.

“It was nice meeting you as well,” Cas replies. Jo tugs on her gloves, and with a brief wave, steps out of the front door and into the snow.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not going to bother giving excuses this time, but my life is about to get a lot less hectic very quickly, so i should be back to a regular posting schedule by the weekend of the 13th. thank you so much to the people who have stuck with me this whole time, i promise that this fic is never going to be abandoned ♡

Something eases between them. Castiel doesn’t realize it at first, because Monday morning dawns bright and he is awoken at an ungodly hour by Dean leaving for work. He doesn’t see Dean that day, other than the quickly scrawled note left on the counter that gives directions to a small bookstore down the street from Dean’s home. It’s signed with “ _say hi to Charlie for me,_ ” and a small amount of cash is hidden under the note. Castiel frowns, but he takes the note and the money anyway, leaving just after ten that morning.

Once he’s dressed, Castiel slips the bills into the pocket of his jacket and laces up his ratty boots, the soft socks Dean had bought him poking through a hole in the toe. The air, when he steps out of the house, is cold on the bare patch of wool, and Castiel shoves his hands into his pockets and ignores it while he walks.

The bookstore is lit softly, and a small bell chimes when Castiel pushes open the doors. The first thing he notices is the almost overpowering smell of incense; the second is the orange tabby cat that immediately winds itself around his ankles. He nearly trips before he realizes, and only then he barely catches himself on one of the strong bookshelves lining the wall. In the corner next to him, there’s a small display of baked goods, and a coffee menu hangs on the wall behind the counter. Several people are sitting in the various beanbags and armchairs scattered around the cramped room, steaming cups of coffee in ceramic mugs perched on tables next to them.

“Hey, can I get you something?” A woman calls from the counter. Castiel glances down at his feet to make sure he’s not going to step on the cat again before making his way over and stopping in front of the counter. The woman smiles broadly, and he notes that she can’t be more than a few years older than him. She’s wearing a shirt with the name of a local college stamped on it, and Castiel feels a sudden pang in his chest. Instead of acknowledging it, he glances up at the menu.

“Could I have a medium peppermint tea?” There’s enough money in his pocket to order ten of the most expensive drinks on the list, but Castiel needs something a little more familiar in such a new space. He wonders how he’s never come across the little shop before—he’d spent the better part of a year in this neighborhood. The woman nods and rings him up, looking him over with an appraising eye.

“You look like you need it. A strong wind could probably blow you over.” The end of her sentence drops off in a soft laugh, and Castiel can’t help but laugh self-consciously with her. He knows that he still doesn’t look healthy, but something about her good-naturedness helps him relax about it.

“I’m Hannah,” she continues, handing him back his change and grabbing a ceramic mug and beginning to move around the small area like she’s been doing it all her life. “Are you new around here?”

Castiel shrugs, fingering the folded-up note in his pocket. “I’m Castiel—I just moved in with a friend near here for a little while,” he says finally, not dishonestly. “I like it, though.”

“That’s good,” she replies warmly, looking at him over her shoulder. “Who’s the friend? If they sent you here, they’re probably decent.”

“Dean?” Castiel says after a moment, trying to conjure up Dean’s last name and realizing that he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t have to, though, because Hannah’s face lights up when she hears it. She leans over the counter briefly, a smile bright on her face.

“Hell, he’s more than decent. The guy’s got great taste in books, and that’s coming from me.” She goes to hand him the steaming mug, but when Castiel goes to reach for it, he finds that his bandaged hand can’t grip it tightly enough. She frowns and walks carefully around the bar, setting it down on an empty table next to an armchair, which isn’t too far away from the counter. The bookshelf behind the beanbag is colorfully labelled _classics_. “Here. This way I can keep an eye on you, just in case.”

Her teasing tone makes Castiel smile. He hasn’t really stopped smiling, he realizes, since he stepped through the door. He settles into the chair gingerly, shedding his slightly damp coat and hanging it over the arm, selecting a book at random from the shelf behind him. Hannah returns to her place behind the counter and beams when she sees the curling script on the front cover.

“ _The Iliad_. Have you read it before?” Castiel glances down at the worn leather cover, nodding his head slightly. He has vague memories of stumbling over the words in the first few chapters as a boy, trying to look up each one he didn’t know in their huge, bettered dictionary, before finally giving up and enjoying the cadence of the words on the page. He didn’t retain much of it, but he remembers thinking that it was pretty.

Hannah seems content to let him sit there and read, sipping at the mug of tea next to him. She tends to a few more customers while Castiel looses himself in the vague familiarity of the plot and the worn pages. When he’s nearly thirty pages in, the bell to the entrance tinkles and the pitch of Hannah’s voice changes.

“Charlie! It’s been too long.” Castiel’s head snaps up in time to see Charlie, with her red hair and several layers of sweaters, leaning over the counter to wrap Hannah in a tight embrace.

“It’s been like four days,” Charlie insists, but when she leans back, Castiel sees her bright smile. He takes a long sip of his tea and glances down at the open pages of his book, which is apparently enough time for Charlie to see him.

“Cas!” She exclaims, with just as much enthusiasm as she’d greeted Hannah. He attempts to wave with his bandaged hand while setting down his mug, and sees her eyes go wide. “What happened?”

In a moment she’s by her side, leaving Hannah behind to brew a coffee that Charlie hadn’t ordered. Castiel looks down at his bandaged hand, the tips of his fingers poking out sadly from the top, and shrugs. She looks like she wants to reach out for him, he knows. He’s spent a long time learning how to read body language, and he can tell that she’s holding herself back from him. “It was an accident.”

“It’s been like, two days since I’ve seen you,” she protests, like she had with Hannah. “Is this a habit of yours?”

“Getting into accidents?” Castiel repeats, a little startled to realize that the corners of his mouth have turned up in the barest hint of a smile. “I hope not.”

“Good,” Charlie says magnanimously, plopping herself down in the beanbag next to his armchair. Hannah brings her out a steaming drink in a ceramic mug larger than Castiel’s, and Charlie beams at her. “You’re an angel.”

“I know,” Hannah replies, the hint of a smirk tugging at her lips. Castiel takes another sip of his piping-hot tea to hide his growing smile. She makes herself comfortable back behind the counter, just a few feet away.

“So, Cas,” she starts, and Castiel gives up all hope of getting much reading done. “How did you meet Dean?”

Castiel freezes. He hadn’t considered this—didn’t think that it would eve come up. He thinks, briefly, about telling the truth, about describing the snow seeping into the holes in his jeans and a meaty hand around his throat and fifty dollars shoved into his hands for no reason he could think of. Castiel thinks about saying it, and something tight and ugly curls up in his stomach and makes his face heat up. _Shame_.

“I—um.” He licks his perpetually chapped lips and adjusts his grip on the handle of his drink. “He—it’s hard to explain.”

He doesn’t want to lie to them, to these people who seem to trust him implicitly, but at the same time he can’t tell them the truth. Shame joins hand with fear, making his stomach churn, and something must show on his face because Charlie just nods sympathetically.

“Well, you’re in good hands with him,” she says, smiling softly up at him. She has bags under her eyes, Castiel notices, almost as dark as his own, and he’s suddenly reminded that she’s probably hurting right now too. He almost wants to mention Jo, but thinks better of it before he opens his mouth. Something in the way Charlie speaks makes Castiel think that she has personal experience with Dean’s hospitality.

“So,” Charlie says abruptly, narrowing her eyes at him in a way that conveys curiosity rather than anger. “Castiel. How come you’re in here reading Homer, but you’ve never heard of Lord of the Rings?”

 

Dean’s getting ready to bang his head on the desk when his cell phone starts ringing. He answers before even looking at the caller ID, and is surprised to hear Bobby’s gruff voice greet him from the other end of the line.

“Oh, thank god,” he says, letting it slip out before he can catch himself. Dean has a splitting headache, Zachariah’s been glaring at him all day, and it’s only eleven o’clock; he is in desperate need of a break. Bobby chuckles, and it brings Dean back to Nebraska, just for a moment.

“Told you years ago not to take that fancy office job,” Bobby teases. “Look where it got you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean groans, letting himself slump back in his chair. Zachariah had left for lunch ten minutes ago, so he’s probably not going to be back for a while. Dean hopes. “What’s up, Bobby?”

“Too much,” Bobby replies, exasperation evident in his tone. “You kids are going to drive me to an early grave.”

“So you got my email?” Bobby snorts.

“Yeah, I got your damn email. And Ellen’s been on the phone with Jo for the last three days, because apparently neither of you are capable of making good choices.”

“You would have done the same thing, Bobby. You didn’t see this kid, all his clothes were falling apart. He had _holes in his shoes_ , I couldn’t just leave him out to freeze.” Dean finds himself startled, remembers that he’d only found Castiel a few days ago.

“Sounds a little like you,” Bobby mentions, but his voice is softening. “Look, I can’t exactly condemn you for it, but your bleeding heart is gonna get you into trouble someday.”

“I know,” Dean says. He sounds weary, even to his own ears. “But he’s a good kid, Bobby, and he’s gone through some fucking awful things. I can’t just turn him out now.”

He doesn’t mention to Bobby that he doesn’t want to make Castiel leave. The mere thought leaves something aching in his chest. Cas doesn’t deserve anything that he’s been through, and Dean can’t subject him to someone else abandoning him. So maybe he’s projecting a little. So what?

Finally, Bobby sighs. “If he’s still around by Christmas, bring him with you. If he hasn’t robbed you blind first.”

“Thanks, Bobby.”

“And keep your refrigerator full. Teenagers eat a hell of a lot more than you think they do, boy.”

“He’s nineteen, Bobby.” It’s strange to think about—Castiel is nearly ten years younger than him, but in some regards he seems to be at least as old as Dean.

“Well, at least you’re not going to jail,” Bobby says, scorn tinting his voice. Dean immediately wants to protest _it’s not like that_ , because Castiel is too fragile and wouldn’t want something _like that_ anyway, but he knows that once Bobby has an idea in his mind, it’s fixed.

“Thanks,” Dean says again. It’s more of a scoff, really, but Bobby lets it go.

He hangs up not long after, too conscious of Adler’s office across the hall to really let himself fall into the conversation. He gets a brief update on Ellen and Jo—who has decided to delay her upcoming move—and in turn promises Bobby that he won’t let her get involved in anything too illegal. The conversation ends mere moments before Zachariah strides cockily from the elevator to his office, where he spins on his heel to survey the floor before nodding smugly to himself and slamming the glass door behind him.

Dean’s pretty sure that people haven’t been telling him that his boxers are showing through his unzipped fly on purpose. Zachariah isn’t particularly well-liked.

He escapes work hours later, with significantly more paperwork than he’d like stacked in his briefcase. The storm is starting to blow itself out, but the roads are still hell, and Dean passes more than one wreck on the half-hour drive home. It’s nearly half that in spring and summer, but the ice on the roads tend to make people more cautious, or more prone to danger.

When he finally does make it home, locking the mudroom door behind him, Dean finds the house empty. The money he’d left Castiel is gone, along with the note he’d left it under. A sharp bolt of fear hits him, and Dean has to stop himself from looking around Castiel’s room to make sure that he hasn’t packed up and left. Instead, he bundles himself back into the Impala and drives the short distance to Grounds for Thought, hoping with his heart in his throat that he’ll find Cas there.

As soon as he steps in, the soft light and heat washing over him, along with the familiar smell of coffee, Dean immediately relaxes. Castiel is curled up in one of the large armchairs by the door, one finger marking his page in a book while he listens to Charlie talk, he voice animated and her hands gesturing wildly. As soon as Castiel sees him, his face lights up, and Dean tries to quell the satisfaction that curls in his stomach.

“Hi, Dean,” he murmurs, once Charlie reaches a break in her anecdote, and she almost topples back into the huge beanbag under her in her haste to turn around. The lanky teenage girl behind the counter waves at him while taking an order, and Dean can feel the stress sloughing off of him in droves.

“Hey guys,” he says, settling into the armchair on Castiel’s other side and angling it towards the pair. “Have either of you actually looked at a clock recently?”

“...No?” Charlie answers sheepishly. “We got distracted, sorry.”

Since Charlie’s less of a journalist and more of a blogger, she often finds herself with free afternoons, which is how she and Dean had stumbled across Grounds for Thought, which is conveniently tucked in between two old townhouses smack between Dean’s own house and the University of Chicago. They’ve become frequent enough customers to know all of the overworked, college-attending staff by name, but neither of them have ever met the elusive owner, even though his name gets tossed around frequently around disruptive customers.

“I’m sorry, Dean.” Castiel says guiltily, after glancing at the time on Charlie’s phone. He looks like he knows Dean’s reaction when he had returned to an empty house.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Dean replies, forcing a smile to his face and realizing that it isn’t as hard as he’d though it would be. “Just give me a heads up next time, okay?”

“Of course,” Cas promises, but Dean frowns when he realizes that he’s pretty sure Cas doesn’t have a phone. Before he can comment, though, a steaming to-go cup is shoved rather rudely under his nose. Dean looks up in mild surprise, but takes the drink, inhaling deeply and letting out a moan when the scent hits him.

“You’re a lifesaver, Alex, honestly.” Alex is one of the surlier kids that works at the shop, but Dean’s known her since she was a pimpled, angry middle schooler, and he can’t help but feel a certain fondness towards her.

“Whatever. Mom says that you have to come over for lunch on Wednesday or she’ll tell Bobby that you keep getting arrested in bar fights.” Alex walks away without another word, but Dean can see the corner of her mouth curl up when he gets up briefly to drop a five dollar bill into her tip jar.

“Bar fights, huh?” Charlie asks, smirking. Dean snorts.

“Just the one, and if I’m remembering correctly, you’re the one who started it.” Charlie sighs wistfully, looking off into nothingness.

“Oh, the good old days. Getting drunk every night, sleeping off the hangover, and getting punched in the face too often for my own good.” Dean tactfully doesn’t mention the bruised skin under her eyes and the way her fingers are twitching, a telltale sign of too much coffee and not enough sleep.

“Hey,” he says, as gently as possible. “Maybe we should head home. It’s almost dinnertime, and I’ll make you the famed Dean Winchester special.”

“What’s that?” Charlie asks, her eyes snapping back to reality. Dean shrugs.

“I don’t know. We’ll see what I’ve got in the fridge.” She grins. Castiel stands up and wanders off towards the counter, book still in hand.

“Sounds perfect.”

They’re ready to go shortly, Castiel coming back with a receipt bookmarking his place in his new book and Charlie returning the one she had on her lap to its place on the shelf. Charlie bundles herself up in all her layers of sweaters, and Castiel shrugs on the coat Dean had gotten him. The coat makes him look thicker, like a much-needed layer of fat that stops Castiel from looking like a hollowed-out shell.

“Thank you,” Cas says, pausing in the doorway. “For telling me about this.”

“You shouldn’t have to stay cooped up all day,” Dean replies, glancing back at the used copy of _The Iliad_ tucked under Castiel’s arm. “You know I have a copy of that, right?”

Castiel apparently didn’t, but he shrugs anyway. “So this one’s mine.”

It’s an offhand comment, but the weight of it is not lost on either of them. Castiel clutches the book a little tighter to his chest and clambers into the backseat of the Impala. Charlie ducks into the passenger seat moments later, grinning brightly. It’s a relief to see, but Dean knows just how fragile this balance is. One wrong word or shifting movement could upset it at a moment’s notice, and yet. Dean finds himself grinning as the engine revs, Charlie’s head resting on his shoulder for the briefest of moments.

“Home, Jeeves,” Charlie says, and Dean pulls out of his parking spot as the engine gives a satisfied rumble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come talk to me at http://jvstens.tumblr.com !!


	8. Chapter 8

Castiel retreats to his bedroom as soon as he, Charlie, and Dean arrive back at Dean’s house. His new-old book is tucked under his arm, the receipt sticking out like a bookmark, and he slips it into the plastic bag by his bed. He thinks for a moment about hiding it under the stack of clothing on the desk chair that exists because he hasn’t yet opened the closet door, but chooses not to.

The last room he had called his own hadn’t been a room he had to himself. Castiel isn’t used to the silence of this bedroom. He isn’t used to the size or the privacy, and every time he wakes up in it he expects to see the wooden slats of the bunk above him shifting under the weight of one of his siblings. Out of habit, he’s kept the bag Dean had given him next to the headboard of the bed, with everything Castiel calls his own inside it: his battered wallet, the only pair of clothes he’d managed to hold on to on the streets, his toothbrush. The book he’d claimed as his own.

Piled on the chair next to the desk is everything Dean had bought him sans the toothbrush, because Castiel needs to keep reminding himself of what he owes Dean. When he can work again, when he has enough money, when he’s not still scared that Dean is going to open his door one night and demand payment.

Castiel smooths the rumpled sheets on the bed and very steadfastly ignores the amount of sleep that he is not getting. Maybe he should start locking the door.

Dean and Charlie are murmuring quietly in the kitchen, and when Castiel returns, Dean’s hand is resting gently on his friend’s shoulder. Castiel strokes a thumb over the rough bandage covering most of his hand and waits for an appropriate moment to step over the threshold. Charlie takes a fortifying breath, and when Dean’s hand drops, she perches herself on a stool and plasters on a grin.

“Dean,” Charlie announces, when she sees Castiel standing in the doorway, “is making mac n’ cheese.”

She says it like it’s important, like every word is capitalized, and for some reason it makes Castiel smile. Like maybe Dean making mac n’ cheese is the most important thing in the world, because home-cooked food is a luxury Castiel had nearly forgotten until now, because Dean’s hands look rough and somehow gentle as they grate cheese onto a cutting board. He settles himself on the stool beside Charlie and watches.

“Have you ever had Dean’s mac n’ cheese before?” Charlie asks. She spins a ring on her middle finger like she’s not quite used to the weight of the small blue stone nestled delicately into the gold. It nearly slips off, and Castiel notices that it’s a bit too big for her slender finger.

“I haven’t known him for very long,” Castiel admits. “I probably haven’t had a lot of his food.”

“How long?” There’s a crease between Charlie’s brow as she looks between them. Castiel knows that he told Cassie what had transpired between him and Dean, and it’s somewhat gratifying to know that she hadn’t shared any of that with Charlie. It’s strange, though, because he sort of wishes that she had—it would spare him the humiliation of having to say it all again.

“About a week,” Dean says, before Castiel can work up the courage to try. “Cas and I kind of hit it off, though.”

Charlie’s eyes narrow slightly, and Castiel scratches gently at his bandage with one fingernail. He can feel her judgement shifting, and though they’d spent the better part of the day talking, Castiel is keenly aware at that moment that they really don’t know each other at all.

“A week?” She says. Charlie is leaning one elbow on the marble counter, her hair clipped back from her face with a variety of colorful bobby pins, three different rainbow-tinted buttons with Hermione Granger’s face on them adorning her jacket. Objectively, she’s incredibly non-threatening, yet somehow Castiel is terrified of her, in a strangely warm, familiar way that makes him think that if he were part of her family, her inner circle, that he’d have very little to fear, despite that simmering anger he’d glimpsed just a few days before.

He wonders what it might take to become one of those people.

“I was homeless,” Castiel says, finally. Instead of meeting her gaze, he lets the red-hot shame burning his cheeks dictate his eyes towards his jagged fingernails. He resists the urge to bite them, to draw stinging blood to the surface of his skin. “Dean saved my life.”

It’s a striking thought. Castiel sees, out of the corner of his eyes, Dean’s hands cease their movement. Charlie’s hand twitches toward him on the counter, and Castiel removes his bandaged hand from the surface and places it gingerly in his lap. He doesn’t want her pity.

“I’m glad.” It’s very quiet in the kitchen. On the stove, a pot of water spits and hisses as it boils, and Castiel is bitterly reminded that his mother wouldn’t agree with Charlie. His entire family, and not one had reached out a hand to him that night. Charlie’s hand inches closer, her chipped aquamarine nail polish stunningly bright. Castiel doesn’t let himself think about his own hands, which have made their way back up to the cool marble. He closes his eyes, and focuses on the sound of the stove as he slides his hand those fateful centimeters closer.

Charlie’s hands are cold. That’s the first thing that registers, because only the tips of their fingers are touching. It still steals Castiel’s breath. Every nerve in his body is screaming at him to pull away, his mind is threatening that awful fog that makes him lose touch with himself, and yet Castiel lets Charlie wind her fingers through his. The metal of her too-large ring is stark against her soft skin.

“Me too,” he murmurs. He tugs his fingers away and curls his hands in his pockets, eyes still closed. It’s easy to imagine Dean’s face from his silence, the stunned bow of his lips, his still hands. Castiel wants to question himself, wants to inspect why he’d acquiesced to Charlie’s touch sooner than Dean’s, but right now he’s tired.

“Who’s ring is it?” He finally asks. The dark is comforting and familiar against the angry buzzing of the nerves of his fingertips. “The one you’re wearing.”

Something splashes into the boiling water on the stove. Pasta, maybe. Dean is back in motion. Charlie’s fingernails drum against marble.

“My mom’s,” she says. Something acidic bites into Castiel’s chest. “I disconnected her life support last year, and I promised that I would never forget her. So this is me. Never forgetting.”

“But you’ve moved on,” Dean says, and it surprises Castiel enough that he opens his eyes. Charlie’s eyes are downcast but her mouth is curved up at one edge, Dean’s hand a reassuring weight on her shoulder. The mountain of cheese on the cutting board has grown exponentially, and Castiel finds himself impressed.

“Yeah,” Charlie rasps, a little teary. “Yeah, I have.”

Castiel thinks of his own mother’s wedding ring, and absentmindedly rubs his thumb over the scar on his cheek. The diamond had cut into his skin deep enough that he still bears the raised, pink mark.

“I’m glad,” Castiel echoes. He doesn’t think that he’s moved on, but it seems like a nice idea.

“Me too,” Charlie says, softly. Her eyes are smiling now. It’s a very nice thing to see.

“Me three,” Dean chimes, resting his chin on top of Charlie’s head. She tries to look up at him, and only succeeds in crossing her eyes.

Castiel smiles, and forces back the dampness that stings at the corners of his eyes.

The mac n’ cheese is, in Dean’s humble opinion, fucking great. Cas looks like he’s on the edge of his seat, ready to bolt at any moment, but he still scarfs down three plates in the time it takes Dean to eat two. He doesn’t make eye contact with either of them before retreating into his bedroom, and leaves Dean and Charlie sitting at the counter, shoulders pressed together.

“Is he okay?” Charlie asks softly. She traces the outline of some foreign shape on the counter with one nail, and tucks her head under Dean’s jaw.

“I don’t know,” Dean admits. Something about it rings false, because he’d seen the rawness of Castiel’s expression when Charlie’s fingers had twined with his, had seen the scabs under his fingernails and the rawness of the skin around them. “Are you?”

Charlie answers this with a wry twist of her lips. Dean huffs out a laugh through his nose.

“That’s what I thought.”

“I talked to Jo,” Charlie says, moments later. “She came home last night while I was packing my stuff.”

Dean thinks it probably wouldn’t be wise to mention that Jo had been at his house before that. Charlie doesn’t sound angry, though, just tired. Maybe a little sad.

“She said she was thinking about staying here after all, and I just. I snapped. I told her that I couldn’t keep doing this, that I was done being yanked around on a chain every time she changed her mind about something. And she just—she just _looked_ at me, Dean, and I felt awful, but I couldn’t take any of it back because the she’d think that I’m okay with how she’s been treating me.”

This is a mess. Charlie’s eyes are red-rimmed, although she looks as though she’d rather fight than cry. Dean isn’t really sure what to do, other than offer his unwavering support, but he knows that Charlie understands. She’d been his rock after Cassie, after Gordon, and even if she hadn’t known what to say sometimes, it was the _being there_ that really helped.

“I don’t know what to do,” Charlie says miserably. Dean sighs, and pulls her up off her stool and into a tight hug. They’re the same hight, while he’s sitting, and Charlie fits herself into his arms like she belongs there.

After a long moment, Charlie pulls away. She smiles at Dean, and even though it’s forced it makes them both feel better.

“I should go.” She looks at the half-empty pan of food on the table. “But you should probably pack some of that up for me.”

She leaves with most of the mac n’ cheese tucked in a plastic container under her arm, a kiss pressed to her forehead along with a promise that everything will be okay. It seems like something that Dean’s been saying a lot recently, be it to himself or to other people. When he says it to Charlie, though, it doesn’t feel like a platitude. They’ve been through too much together, and he’s seen her worn down enough to know that she’ll make it out of this.

Dean loses himself in the newspaper, after she leaves. He sits at the too-cluttered kitchen table and props the paper on top of a stack of mail he’d promised to throw away and then never did. By the time he puts it down, the kitchen is dark and the streetlamp outside is shining obstinately. Dean glares at it, and puts hot water on to boil.

Ten minutes later, he’s knocking gently on Castiel’s door, two mugs of tea balanced carefully in one hand. Castiel opens the door just enough that half his face is visible, along with a shock of dark hair that’s sticking straight up in the air. Dean wonders if he wants a haircut.

“Hey,” Dean says softly, “we need to change your bandage. I made you tea?”

Castiel looks like he’d rather do anything but let Dean near him right now, his one eye wide and darting around, not quite settling on Dean’s face.

“Can it wait?” He asks, like he knows it can’t. Dean shakes his head and lifts the mugs enticingly, like he can bribe Castiel into agreeing. It seems to work, though, because Cas pushes the door open the rest of the way and steps out. Dean backs up, trying to let him have his space, watching Castiel carefully.

He’s in Dean’s old shirt again, and Dean feels like there are rocks sinking into the pit of his stomach. The neckline is still to wide, and Castiel’s skinny collarbones are still too prominent, and his arm where it’s crossed across his waist is too skinny for Dean to dismiss. Once he’s out of the room, he doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes. It feels like a sep back, even though Dean of all people should know that healing isn’t exactly a straight and easy path.

He finally leads Castiel to the living room and sits them both down on the floor next to the coffee table, the first aid kit open on the carpet. Dean only turns on the small lamp by the armchair and tries to ignore the play of shadow across Cas’s face, casting his cheekbone into sharp definition. When Dean reaches out for him, Castiel flinches away, and as much as Dean hates it, he reaches out his hand again and again, never once brushing the bare skin of Castiel’s arm.

Finally, he compromises. Dean lets one hand drop palm-up onto the carpet, letting his eyes skitter away from Castiel’s. It’s a long time coming, but the tips of Cas’s fingers eventually brush his palm, and Dean is able to hold his shaking hand steady enough to unpin the bandaging. Every time his fingers touch the skin of Castiel’s palm or wrist, Dean wants to berate himself, and by the time he’s done, both of them are wrecks.

Dean hates this. He hates the fear in Castiel’s eyes and the way he’s bunched his good hand in the loose fabric around his waist, as if to stop himself from reaching out. He hates the shaking hands and the pinched brow and the bruised lip and the bitten-raw fingernails. Everything about Castiel makes Dean ache, to hold him or to reassure him or to promise him that someday, this will be over.

When Dean finally zips up the first aid kit, his own hands unsteady, Castiel bolts upright. He grabs his mug with his good hand, and with a mumbled thanks, he disappears back into his bedroom. From down the hall, Dean hears the _click_ of the lock bolting Castiel securely inside. He isn’t sure why it sends a sharp pang through his chest.

He retreats to his bedroom after a few minutes of sitting in the dark. Dean flicks off the hallway light, pausing in his doorway to listen for a moment. From behind the closed door, he can barely hear the soft sound of flipping pages, a dull glow peeking through the gap above the floor.

Dean goes to bed, but he tosses and turns all night.


	9. Chapter 9

Castiel doesn’t sleep. Not that night, at least. He keeps the door locked until he can’t stand being in his bedroom any more, and then he retreats into the kitchen, socks muffling his footsteps and the moon casting strange shadows on the walls as he passes by windows.

Dean’s kitchen is the largest that Castiel has ever been in, with a marble island in the middle that leaves enough room for at least two people to walk between it and the counter up against the wall with ease. The stools at the island are padded, and Castiel sinks into his usual seat, the one at the very end, without even noticing. Something about the kitchen reminds him of Dean—too big and generous and ready to accept him, despite everything.

Movement, seen from the corner of his eye, makes Castiel whirl around. The wind outside the house is loud enough to drown out any other noise, any intruder that may be trying to break in, but when Castiel turns, all he sees is a small cat sitting on the windowsill. It’s watching him, big eyes dark and contrasting against its light grey fur. A dusting of snow sits on its head.

Before he even really realizes it, Castiel is up off his stool, reaching for the handle of the front door. He pauses for a moment, trying to clear his head, but the night is absolute and the falling snow is making everything strangely fuzzed. When he steps outside, though, everything sharpens with startling speed—the cold snow seeping into the thin material of Dean’s too-big shirt, the slick ice that his socked feet are threatening to skid on.

He doesn’t even think before grabbing the cat, who allows itself to be carted back into the house with only a sharp _meow_ as protest. When the door shuts behind him, Castiel releases a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding, and slumps against the front door.

“Cas?” The sound makes Castiel jump, squeezing tight enough that the cat in his arms squirms away, landing gracefully on its feet and jumping up onto one of the stools by the counter. Dean emerges from the dark hallway, one hand rubbing at his face. Castiel stares back through the dark, trying to quell the shivers he hadn’t realized were wracking his body. “Did you just go out there for a fucking cat?”

And, oh, this is new. Castiel freezes in place, his eyes wide, one hand gripping the door handle tightly. Dean’s voice is would tight with sudden anger, and that’s new. Castiel is used to people being angry, used to shouting and cold glares and immediate punishments, but this is the first time he’s heard Dean _angry_. It shouldn’t scare him this much, but it’s hard to ignore that this is Dean’s _house_ when he’s standing in the dark kitchen, wearing nothing but clothes Dean had let him borrow. Castiel feels vulnerable, and it makes panic coil in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he says, almost on instinct. Before Dean can reply, looking more alert with every passing second, another loud _meow_ comes from near Castiel’s feet. Without a second thought, Castiel leans down and scoops up the cat again, who butts its head up into his chin and starts purring contentedly. In front of him, Dean hasn’t responded, a curious look on his face. The cat nudges him with its head again, and that’s when Castiel realizes.

Its body is warm in his trembling, icy arms, soft fur tickling at his exposed skin, and Castiel isn’t breaking down. Standing in front of Dean, his soaked socks dripping onto the floor, a soft gray cat in his arms, Castiel feels younger than he has in years, and he feels afraid for the strangest reason. Castiel doesn’t know who he is, and it’s nearly four in the morning and he’s standing holding another living creature, and he doesn’t know who he is without his mother whispering in his ear all the things that he is not allowed to be.

“What were you _thinking_?” Dean asks, his voice soft and raspy and so, so _concerned_. 

“I wasn’t,” Castiel answers dumbly, and the cat meows in assent. Its purring sends little vibrations throughout his shaking body. Dean’s t-shirt is damp, and it clings to his shoulders and drips water down his spine.

“No shit.” All the anger has gone out of Dean’s posture, and he reaches forward slowly, brow furrowed. Castiel tries to back up, but his back hits the closed front door. He doesn’t relax until Dean has safely pried the cat out of his arms without brushing his skin, and then Castiel bunches his hands up in the loose fabric at his hips and casts his eyes toward the ground.

“Come on,” Dean sighs, “I’ll run you a bath. You look like you’re about to collapse.”

Castiel _feels_ like he’s about to collapse. Dean drops the cat rather unceremoniously next to the kitchen table, and it makes an agitated sound at him, twining itself around Castiel’s legs defensively. Dean rolls his eyes and reaches for a tissue from the counter, blowing his nose loudly once he gets one.

The master bathroom is through Dean’s room, and it’s much larger than the spare that Castiel uses, two doors down from his own room. The bathtub is large and clean, and there are jets along the sides. He watches warily as Dean tests the water, then adds something to it as the tub begins to fill. 

“Just—come out whenever you’re ready,” Dean says, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. He looks rumpled, in nothing but a t-shirt and boxers, and Castiel forces himself to look away until the bathroom door shuts firmly behind Dean. He locks it, for good measure.

He doesn’t like to look at himself, when he takes off his clothes. It only serves as a reminder of hunger and fear and cold, and as Castiel strips off his snow-damp garments, his fingers trembling when he leans down to pull off his socks, he’s reminded of the countless nights spent shivering into a shitty coat, of blue fingers and toes and wishing for some man to come by and coax him into a pickup truck because at least he’d be able to give a blowjob someplace _warm_. Castiel blinks tears from his eyes, and reminds himself that they won’t freeze on his cheeks tonight.

The water is so warm, Castiel almost falls asleep in the tub, his bandaged arm hanging over the side. What Dean had added to the water turns out to be bubble bath, and it leaves Castiel’s skin smelling faintly of citrus. He has to force himself to rise and towel off, once the water has gone tepid, and he can’t bring himself to dress in the wet clothes still piled on the floor next to the sink. It takes Castiel a while to work up the courage to leave the room, mindful of the fading bruises on his knees and on his ribs because the towel can only hide one, but when he does pick his way from the bathroom to the bedroom, Dean is nowhere in sight.

When he’s freshly dressed, Castiel feels more awake and more comfortable. A fresh pair of wool socks keep his feet warm, a pair of Dean’s old sweatpants still hanging low on his too-thin hips despite the drawstring. Castiel puts on his nice jacket over a long-sleeved shirt, just because he can.

Dean is dressed too, when Castiel emerges into the kitchen, and he’s glaring daggers at the cat from across the table. Next to him, there’s a box of allergy medicine, and Castiel feels a sharp pang of guilt.

When he lies down on the couch, nothing but the kitchen counter separating him and Dean, it only takes a moment until the cat comes over and curls up on his chest. It purrs, looking somewhere close to smug, and moments later, Dean follows them into the living room. He perches in an armchair, almost directly across from Castiel, and folds his hands in his lap.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says, just to break the silence. He doesn’t like Dean like this, with concern written plainly across his face. “I didn’t want her to freeze.”

“Please,” Dean snorts. “This asshole’s been around as long as I have, and it seems to be doing fine.”

“Oh.” Castiel frowns down at the cat, who’s curled comfortably on top of his sternum and licking her paws contentedly. “I’ve never had a pet before.”

It’s a random piece of information, but Dean’s face softens. His shoulders slump, and he leans forward in his chair a little.

“Neither have I,” he admits. “When I was little, we lived out of motel rooms. Never even stuck around long enough to enroll me in school. Group homes never had any either, but sometimes they brought in therapy dogs for the really messed up kids.”

“What about your adoptive father?” Castiel asks, curious despite himself. The warmth and pressure of the creature on his chest is having the exact opposite effect of what he’d anticipated—instead of constricting, his breath is longer and more even, her weight comforting instead of terrifying. He vaguely wonders if he’s one of those _really messed up kids_ , one who couldn’t even hold someone’s hand without panicking. Dean laughs a little, not privy to the confusing mix of emotions threatening to boil over inside Castiel.

“Bobby always said that he didn’t have any energy for kids, much less dogs. I know he had one before he married Ellen, but that was years before I met him. What about you?” Dean looks like he knows that he’s breaching a sensitive topic, but this is how it works. It strikes Castiel how much this entire thing is built on a tenuous foundation of half-shared experiences and scraps of information that slowly have begun to form an image in his mind of who Dean is. So he glances down at the soft gray head pillowed on his collarbone and starts talking again.

“I guess she was afraid that we’d hug them or something, that we’d taint ourselves with the animals. If touching people was bad, I don’t know what she’d say if she saw any of us petting a dog.” _Or a cat._

“What about your dad?” Castiel closes his eyes. He tries to think of a way to explain, but after the bath and the blanket covering his feet and the warmth on top of him, his mind is finally alerting him that he’s ready to sleep. Instead of answering Dean, he shakes his head softly. His hair falls into his face, but he’s suddenly too bone-tired to brush it away.

“I guess it’s no use trying to move you, right?” Dean asks, a little humorously. Castiel lets his lips quirk up into a smile and is rewarded with another laugh. He likes Dean’s laugh, Cas decides. He likes it when Dean smiles at him.

He hasn’t opened his eyes, but it’s not much of a surprise when a soft, heavy blanket is draped over him, just up to where the cat is settled on Castiel’s chest. The light from the kitchen flickers out, and from the hall, Castiel can hear soft footsteps retreating.

He falls asleep to the vibrations of the cat’s purrs.

  
  


Dean can’t sleep. It’s still dark out, snow pelting the ground as silently as always, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t keep his eyes shut. Eventually he gives up, and drags himself into the library with three blankets and his laptop in tow. The house is heated, but he still shivers when his bare feet touch the cold wooden floorboards.

He tries not to think about Castiel’s soaked-through socks, the snow melting on his shoulders, the ripped clothes he’d been in when Dean had found him. Instead, he flips open his laptop and whiles away the time doing nothing in particular, grabbing a book at random when he gets bored and flipping it open to one of the dog-eared pages.

It turns out to be one of the ridiculous romance novels Charlie gets him for every gift-giving occasion, one of the ones with naked men with flowing hair on the cover, straddling a horse next to a woman with breasts larger than her head. The prose is ridiculous and the plot nonexistent, but it takes Dean out of his head. When his seven o’clock alarm goes off on his phone, Dean’s stomach is growling and he’s desperately in need of some form of caffeine if he’s going to make it through the day.

Cas is still asleep on the couch when Dean makes his quiet way into the kitchen, but the cat lifts her head and watches him solemnly as he crosses the living room. It feels like she’s protecting Castiel, and Dean would be pissed off, except that he often wants to do the same. The cat puts her head back down when he gets into the kitchen, and Dean uses the foggy light from behind the clouds to brew himself a pot of coffee, not wanting to risk waking Castiel up with a light.

A cup and a half of heavily sugared coffee later, Castiel comes stumbling into the kitchen, the cat on his heels. His hair, as always, is sticking up every which way, igniting a strange mix of irritation and affection in Dean, as always. Castiel doesn’t say a word, instead reaching for a mug in one of the cabinets. Dean very carefully looks away; he should not be noticing the exposed strip of skin that appears when Castiel reaches up, straining on his toes for a mug. 

They’re both coherent not long after, Castiel plopping down on the stool next to Dean. His fingers stick out from the bandage around his hand, and he taps idly against the ceramic. Cas’s nails are jagged and short, scabbed over in places that easily spell out his nail-chewing habit. Dean averts his eyes, again. It seems to be a common theme, this morning.

“I called Benny, yesterday,” he says, because Castiel keeps staring into the inky liquid in front of him like it’s going to answer life’s impossible questions. “He said you could come back to work, if you want. He’d show you how to work the register and everything, so you don’t have to go back to scrubbing dishes.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything for a long moment, but he’s smiling gently, the corners of his eyes creasing. Dean wants to yell at Cas’s parents when he’s reminded how foreign Castiel’s smile is, how rarely Dean’s heard him laugh.

“Thank you, Dean.”

“Hey, don’t thank me. You must have made a damn good impression; Benny’s not exactly a forgiving guy.” The cat jumps up onto the counter, a few scant inches from Dean’s face, and he leans back to sneeze somewhere that isn’t directly above his coffee. Castiel’s smile quickly fades, and his eyes skate over to the allergy medicine on the table. Dean can tell he’s about to say something, but they’re both quickly distracted by the cat, who leaps gracefully off the counter and strides to the front door with her tail sticking straight up.

Cats are fucking weird.

Dean lets her out gratefully, and after making breakfast he and Castiel pile into the Impala for work. Benny’s too busy to stop and chat, so Dean promises to pick Castiel up later. He leaves him under Andrea’s gentle care, smiling when he sees her press a hand to her belly.

As usual, Adler’s in a pissy mood. He slams his office door behind him after storming onto the floor, glares at anyone who looks like they’re about to approach him, and then yells at Dean’s secretary when he barges into Dean’s office uninvited. Dean isn’t allowed to yell at Adler, because he actually _likes_ his job sometimes, but he glares disapprovingly, waving Nia out as he opens his door for Adler. She looks like she’s about to cry, and Dean makes a mental note to make it up to her.

“Something wrong, boss?” Dean asks casually, keeping a wary eye out for any sudden movements. Adler glares.

“You haven’t sent in your order for the Christmas banquet.” Oh. That’s definitely not what Dean was expecting. He puts on his brightest, most placating smile. Zach narrows his eyes, like he sees through Dean’s several layers of well-placed bullshit.

“I haven’t decided on a plus-one,” Dean replies, which is true. Cassie is his usual go-to for the boring work events, because she at least makes the effort to act professional around Dean’s bosses, even as she whispers her running commentary into Dean’s ear. But in the brief moments where Dean’s thought about the upcoming event, he’s considered bringing Cas. He doesn’t know if Castiel would be comfortable, in a room full of smarmy businesspeople, but the thought of Castiel by his side, becoming an even more solidified part of Dean’s life, makes something in Dean twist up happily.

“Well, in that case,” Adler says, a disgusting leer overtaking his features, “make sure she’s a hot one, yeah?”

Dean makes a halfhearted attempt to laugh and nod, but his discomfort is clear, and Zachariah retreats after a few moments, with a parting command to get back to work, as if he hadn’t distracted Dean in the first place.

“Nia? How you doing?” Dean asks through the button on his phone, as soon as he’s sure Adler is a safe distance into the hallway

“I’m fine, Mr. Winchester,” she replies. 

“I’m so sorry about him.” Adler has a habit of pissing off everyone except his superiors, and he’s only mildly polite to Dean because people keep saying that Dean is _going places._

“It’s not your fault,” Nia reassures him, like she’s stopping herself from adding something a little less polite about Adler onto the end of that sentence. Dean honestly wouldn’t blame her, at this point.

That evening, he picks Castiel up from Benny’s and takes him to dinner. It’s partly because he’s not in the mood to cook or get takeout, but it’s also because of the look on Cas’s face when they turn into the parking lot of Dean’s favorite pizza place. His breath fogs up the window of the Impala as he cranes his neck to get a better look at the sign, and when he looks back at Dean his eyes are bright and happy.

“I haven’t had pizza in _so long_ ,” he says, and he looks younger than Dean’s ever seen him. Cas is nineteen, Dean knows, bordering on twenty, but the bags under his eyes and the weariness of his spine sometimes fool Dean into thinking that he’s much older.

“Well, this is the best place I know for it,” Dean replies, and tries to ignore the way Cas is looking at him, grateful and happy and _beautiful_.

They split a pizza, and Dean doesn’t have to bother asking for a box, because Castiel eats everything on his half and then, realizing that Dean isn’t reaching for more slices, works his way over to Dean’s side, devouring the meat lovers slices with a speed that’s bordering on impressive. Dean just watches, and orders dessert when Castiel slips off into the bathroom. He returns to a slice of cake sitting in front of his chair, and his brow creases.

“Everything okay?” Dean asks. Cas nods, but his fingers grab at a strand of his own hair anxiously, tugging it straight before letting it curl up against his chin. When straight, the strand nearly reaches his shoulders.

“You shouldn’t keep spending money on me,” Cas says abruptly. He doesn’t look at Dean when he says it, steadfastly staring down at his fingers, curled in his lap. “I don’t really know what you do, but you’ve been buying me so much stuff.”

“I can afford it,” Dean says. Internally, he’s trying to figure out what’s going on in Castiel’s mind. He’s clearly uncomfortable, but when faced with a plate of food, the kid can’t seem to turn it down. The _why_ of that is obvious, but Dean doesn’t like to dwell on it too long. 

“Do you want to get a haircut?” He asks, instead of the other questions running through his head. Castiel shrugs, but as soon as he finishes chewing, he looks up for the first time since sitting down again.

“As long as I can pay for it,” he says, tone leaving no room for argument. Dean knows he gets paid in a few days, but he doesn’t know how much he’ll get for the few days of work. He makes a note to call Ruby later—she’ll work something out for him, if he cajoles enough. God knows she owes him enough favors.

Castiel leaves no leftovers, and he turns the bill over to Dean with some reluctance, as soon as he sees the number at the bottom.

“I said this place was the best,” Dean shrugs, “not the cheapest.”

That night, Castiel is the one to approach Dean, holding out his wrapped hand. They sit on the living room floor, under one of the blankets Castiel had kicked off that morning, and when they’re done, Castiel is the one to turn on the TV. The cat sits outside the window for a while and watches them, before flicking the now off its gray fur and disappearing into the neighbor’s yard. Dean isn’t sure who it belongs to, but it seems to be doing okay around the neighborhood.

As he sits with his back up against the couch, Castiel mere inches away, Dean is struck by how fully Castiel has integrated himself into Dean’s life. He’s what Dean looks forward to after work, he’s Dean’s first thought when he sees something beautiful, he makes Dean want to make him happy no matter what the cost. It’s terrifying and inappropriate and Dean knows that he should tell someone, that he should ask Charlie or Cassie to take Cas in, because Cas deserves to be safe and comfortable wherever he is, but he just can’t. He doesn’t want to give this up, Dean realizes, with sudden clarity. 

When Castiel falls asleep, head drooping onto his own chest, Dean turns his mind off and stands, carefully wrapping Cas in the blanket and picking him up, careful not to let his fingers touch skin. Castiel doesn’t wake up when Dean picks him up, or when he carries Castiel into his bedroom, or when Dean lays him down on his own bed and pulls the covers over him.

Cas doesn’t wake up when Dean presses a barely-there kiss to his forehead, or when Dean closes the door behind him with a soft _click_. They both sleep through the night.

  
  


Three days later, and Castiel finds himself sat in a too-comfortable chair, a black cape draped over him, and a vaguely frightening woman with a razor scrutinizing him like she’s shaving him bald in her mind. He tries very hard not to feel intimidated, and fails.

“So what style are you thinking about, Clarence?” The woman asks. She reminds Castiel a little bit of Anna, if Anna suddenly decided to dye her hair purple and wear heavy eyeliner. He shrugs.

“Whatever you think is fine.” She snorts, but reaches forward to play with a few strands of his hair, and _oh._ He freezes in the chair, staring wide-eyed into the mirror in front of him as Meg pushes his hair back from his face and fusses with it. Her fingernails scrape against his scalp and it sends a shiver down his spine and makes his breath catch in his throat. Castiel doesn’t even hear what she says, too caught up in figthing his instinct to run and duck away to pay any attention to her.

“So what do you say, pretty boy? Sound good?” 

“I—yes,” Castiel replies, breath catching in his throat, because he can’t think. He closes his eyes and tries not to feel her fingers tracing along his neck, as the razor buzzes to life in her hand.

It’s a long time before Castiel opens his eyes again, a long time spent wondering why he’d agreed to this and why Meg seems to be making a point of _touching_ him so much. She finally steps away though, the last snips of the scissors resonating in his ears. Castiel’s mind is still foggy as he blinks the fuzziness away from his vision, looking into the mirror at someone he doesn’t recognize.

“Told you, Clarence, it’s all the rage,” Meg says jauntily, sweeping up a massive pile of hair. Castiel barely realizes that he’s reaching up until his fingers brush the short hair on the back of his hair. His curls on top fall into his eyes, and Castiel is grateful for the excuse to stop looking at himself.

“Thanks,” he replies, belatedly. Meg waves it off.

“Please, that was more of a favor to myself. Now I don’t have to look at that ugly mop you had on your head. Come on, let’s go show lover boy.”

Castiel doesn’t bother to correct her—she’d whisked him off to the back room seconds after he and Dean had entered the salon, muttering insults under her breath. He lets Meg lead him out of the back and into the well-lit main salon, where Dean sits on a sofa, chatting with the woman at the front desk. He looks up when Castiel approaches, then seems to do a double take. Castiel ducks his head, self conscious, and tries to avoid Dean’s gaze. His fingers are still shaking.

“So, Dean-o? Do you regret trusting me with your boy?” Meg asks, a bit of fondness found somewhere under the sarcasm. Dean clears his throat loudly.

“Um...yeah. Yeah, thanks, Meg.” 

Castiel pays for the haircut at the counter, Meg winking slyly as she rings him up. She gives him ten percent off for his first cut, which he wants to protest, but when Castiel sees the end price he swallows his words. He hadn’t gotten paid very much, and God knows he has enough he has to pay Dean back for.

They bundle up and climb into the Impala in relative silence. Dean is very obviously not looking at him, and Castiel willfully ignores the obvious reason. He rests his head against the cold window and worries at his thumbnail with his teeth.

“Do you like it?” Dean finally asks, as they’re on the road to Benny’s. It’s Friday, and even though Castiel knows Dean doesn’t have work, he’s been taking more shifts over the last few days and has found that he likes being out of Dean’s house for more than an hour to sit in Grounds for Thought.

“Yeah,” he replies, fingering one of the shorter locks at the back of his neck. “I feel lighter.”

The words are stilted, unsure. Castiel wants to shake off this discomfort, but finds himself silent until he steps out of the car into the parking lot at Benny’s.

“See you later?” He asks, unsure. Dean looks at him now, really looks, and Castiel relaxes. This is good, this is familiar. He smiles softly through the rolled-up window, and Dean smiles back with a nod. He says something, but the glass and the snow muffle in just enough to be indistinguishable. Castiel squints, trying to ask Dean to repeat it, but Dean just shakes his head and switches gears, pulling away with a wave and another smile. Castiel stares after the car, a little confused but mostly relieved that whatever had happened in the car seems to have passed.

The shift is a quick one, spent behind the cash register at the front of the restaurant. Garth finishes his shift waiting tables twenty minutes before Castiel does, and he perches at the bar right next to him and talks cheerfully between customers after hanging up his apron.

“Listen, man, you _have_ to come with me next month to this gig at the animal shelter—they’re doing a pet literacy program for new volunteers, so you could sign up and use that to maybe start going more often.” Garth grins and reaches for a napkin, scrawling down a phone number and an address and handing it to Castiel, who scrutinizes it carefully. “That’s my phone number, if you ever wanna just talk, and then that’s the address for the shelter. You look like you could use some doggie therapy, man.”

“Thank you, Garth,” Castiel says. It never ceases to amaze him, just how kind Garth is. He slips the napkin into his pants pocket and looks up, ready to greet the next customers at the jangling of the door. His shift is over in just a few minutes anyway, and there’s no point passing them along to the next girl while he’s still here.

Castiel stops breathing. The man who entered the restaurant barrels past the bar and disappears around the corner to the bathroom, but the brief glimpse Castiel had gotten was enough. The woman who had come in, the woman who had come in _with his brother_ smiles beatifically and sits down at a booth just round the corner when Castiel falteringly invites her to sit anywhere, as he does when Benny’s is as empty as it is now.

“Cas? Are you okay?” Garth asks, a frown creasing his brow, but Castiel barely hears him. He’s still not sure he’s breathing, but he can hear the frantic thud of his heartbeat in his ears and all he can see is Gabriel’s golden hair darting past him without a second glance, without _noticing him_.

“Look, I’m gonna clock you out, okay? You should sit down, you don’t look so good.” Garth reaches out for Castiel, and before he can make contact, Castiel jerks away, hanging up his apron with shaking hands before staggering out the front door. His jacket is clutched in his hand but he doesn’t remember reaching for it, and he sags against the wall and tries to collect himself.

He feels like he’s dying. Castiel’s shaking, and before he can do anything about it he’s on the ground, curled up in a neat little ball in the snow like he’s planning a hibernation. Like the last time he’d seen Gabriel, curled up in a ball on his mattress on the floor.

Christmas, nearly three years ago. Not the kind of Christmas advertised on TV or on greeting cards, but something colder, something stricter. Austere family gatherings bunched in between church services. It comes in fragments, flashing behind Castiel’s eyes, clenched as if that could do anything to make it stop.

_Little Alfie, reaching up from the floor as if pleading for someone to pick him up, to help him, and being rebuffed first by Michael and then by their mother. Naomi, gripping Castiel by the too-tight, starched collar, and hauling him behind her into a wooden pew, hissing reprimands into his ear. Uncle, escorting him into the church’s single-stall bathroom with a feather-light touch to his lower back, crowding him up against the sink , breath too hot and too sour in Castiel’s face. Gabriel, slamming the door open and yanking Uncle off, yelling and cursing and hitting Uncle again and again as Castiel tries to pull him off without brushing skin._

_Mother screaming, yelling terrible insults and flinging them like knives, ordering one of them to get_ out _and Castiel isn’t sure if she’s talking to him this time, Gabriel sneaking in that night and saying goodbye as Castiel tried to make himself invisible under the sheets, Uncle silhouetted in the doorway long after everyone should have been asleep, watching over Castiel who pretended that as long as his eyes were closed, no one could see him_.

When Castiel opens his eyes again, there’s a man in front of him. His eyelashes are caked in snow and Castiel tries to blink it off, only to jolt back in fear when he feels warm hands against his shoulders. The man drags him forward and Castiel fights it with everything he has but it doesn’t work, he’s not strong enough.

“Cas!” The man calls, and Castiel finally reaches up to scrape the ice out of his eyes and looks up and it’s _Dean_ standing above him, Dean who’s face he’s been shoving against, trying to keep him away, and all of the fight drains out of Castiel like someone’s flipped a switch inside of him.

“Dean?” He says. It’s all he can take, forcing the word past his constricting throat muscles.

“Yeah, Cas. Come on, let’s get you out of here.” There’s a trembling note of fear in Dean’s voice, so Castiel lets himself get hauled into the Impala, Dean clambering in after him, sitting in the driver’s seat just a few inches away.

His hand rests an inch away from Castiel’s, and that’s what breaks him. Castiel pulls his knees up to his chest and buries his face in them and lets himself start sobbing. He cries into his soaked pants and Dean sits there and lets him, the motor chugging away and pumping heat through the car, and for some reason, that’s enough.

“Let’s go home, Cas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!! feel free to comment or to come talk to me on tumblr at jvstens.co.vu !!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, I'm so sorry. It's been incredibly hard for me to write during the last month, and this was all I was able to get out. I won't bother making empty promises again but I really do hope to get back on schedule with this story now. This one's a bit short, but I will be trying my hardest to get more chapters out quickly again.

The company banquet is in ten days, and Dean still hasn’t talked to Castiel about it. He doesn’t want to upset the careful domesticity that they’ve cultivated; the fragile truce they’ve called over all the little things. Dean finds that he likes waking up in the mornings to hear Castiel clattering around in the kitchen, trying something new every morning and failing only occasionally. Sometimes, Dean looks at Castiel and thinks back to over two weeks ago now, to the skinny boy with overgrown hair who only looked Dean in the eye to glare at him. The change in Cas has been drastic—he’s still skinny, but he’s gained enough weight that Dean doesn’t feel scared for him all the time. He doesn’t seem afraid to say what he thinks, and his rare smile has been making more and more appearances in the last few days.

Sometimes, though, Castiel locks himself in his bedroom after they get home from work, and Dean won’t see him for hours. The food he leaves in front of the door always vanishes, though, and the plates are almost always stacked neatly on the counter when Dean wakes up the next morning.

The worst day is when Dean takes him to get his stitches removed—Castiel sits silently in the passenger seat, his hair falling into his eyes as he stares out the window. Since he’d broken down behind Benny’s, Castiel hasn’t let Dean touch him—not even to change the bandage on his wrist. It makes Dean’s chest hurt, to see Cas so obviously withdrawn, and it makes him even more upset that he doesn’t know how to help. Castiel tells him to stay in the waiting room, and lets the door shut gently behind him as he follows the nurse out. Dean sighs and gazes after him, wondering in what shape Castiel will be returned.

He can’t dwell on it for long, though, because moments after the door swings shut, Dean's phone buzzes in his pocket. After pulling it out, he stares at Ellen's face on the screen for a long moment, debating the odds of him getting yelled at from something he can't remember doing.

"Hello?" He finally answers, trying to keep his voice low. One of the elderly women in the corner of the room shoots him a dirty look anyways, making him duck his head in embarrassment.

“Hey, Dean,” Ellen says, fake pleasant. “How’s it going?”

“Good,” He replies, almost a question. Dean’s mind darts around to several things she might be upset about: Charlie and Jo, him and Cas, something Dean might not have heard about yet but still might be involved in. “You?”

“I’m all right,” Ellen says, very carefully. “You seem to be having some adventures over there, though. What’s this I hear from Bobby about you taking in strays?”

“What?” Dean pauses, trying to think of an answer that won’t upset her. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to figure out what makes Ellen upset sometimes. “I mean, Cas is a friend. I’m just helping him out until he can get back on his feet.”

The thing is, Dean isn’t sure that’s true anymore. Castiel has carved out a hole for himself in Dean’s life, slowly and quietly enough that Dean only realizes the impact that he’s had every once in a while. When he puts on hot water and automatically gets two mugs out from the cupboard, or barely even has to think about picking Cas up from Benny’s after work now.

“I hope that’s true, boy,” Ellen says. She sounds tired, and Dean wonders if she’s leaning over the bar of the Roadhouse as she speaks, her old regulars just a few seats down.

“He’s not in great shape, right now,” Dean admits. “I’m worried for him.”

“Now you know how Bobby and I felt, all those years ago,” Ellen replies. There’s a bit of humor tinging her voice, but Dean knows that she’s serious. He was probably just as damaged as Castiel when she’d met him.

“How did you deal with that?” He asks. “I know it can’t have been easy, and sometimes I just don’t know what to do to help him.”

“Well,” Ellen says, after a long pause. “It _wasn’t_ easy. And it probably shouldn’t have been. I mean, Dean, the morning after you came home for the first time, we found you sleeping outside Jo’s door with Bobby’s shotgun on your lap, and when we asked why, you said that we’d gotten you to protect her for us. Every time Bobby said something nice to you, you’d just go real still, all ‘thank you, sir’ and all. It was rough, for a while. But we gave you space, and we let you know that we were there for you.

“If you really want to help your Castiel, don’t try and force him to get better. You of all people should remember what healing is like.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” They’re both silent for a long moment, and Dean takes the time to brush his hair out of his eyes. Thinking back, he probably should have gotten a trim when he’d taken Castiel on Friday.

“Listen,” Ellen finally says. “I did call for a reason. Jo’s still looking for a job around Chicago, but she told me if she doesn’t hear back from anyone in the next few weeks, she’s gonna come back home. I wanted to ask if you’d be interested in coming down for the New Year, either to help her move or just to say hi to your folks.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Dean replies, without even really thinking about it. It’s been a while since he’s been home, and at least the trip might give him an excuse to avoid Adler for a while. “I’ll let Jo know that I can help if she needs it.”

“Thanks.” Ellen sounds relieved. Dean knows she worries, knows that even if Ellen is overprotective at times, she still loves Jo and him.

“No problem,” he assures her. Moments later, they end the conversation, and Dean’s left to wait for Castiel to return.

When the waiting room doors open again nearly fifteen minutes later, Dean’s heart sinks. Castiel looks much worse than when he left—his face is pale, his arms are tucked in close to his chest, his head is bowed. The bandage that had been on his had for the last week is gone, though, so at least they don’t have to deal with Dean cleaning the cut every night.

Castiel doesn’t answer when Dean asks if he’s all right, but he does grip the sleeve of Dean’s jacket tightly, letting him tug him towards the door. Before they can make it, though, the nurse calls out to him.

“Mister Winchester, a word, please?” Castiel blinks up at him, reminding Dean strangely of the gray cat he’d found out in the snow, and releases his sleeve. Dean backtracks to where the nurse is standing, and she gestures through the door to where the doctor who’d sewn Castiel up last week is standing, white coat matching the blank walls of the hallway.

“Dean, I’d like to ask you a couple questions about your relationship with Castiel,” she says, and from the careful caution in her voice, Dean can already tell what this is about.

“I’ve only known him for two weeks or so, I’m not sure there’s much to tell.” The doctor smiles, all platitudes and reassurances.

“Of course. I was simply wondering if you had any insight to his situation before he came to be living with you,” she says.

“I’m sorry, what was your name again?” Dean asks. Something about the doctor makes him feel a little uneasy—it might be the way she hasn’t looked away from him since he laid eyes on her, or because he doesn’t think he’s seen her blink.

“Tessa Gray. I’m concerned for Castiel, Dean, and I think that we can get him help. I’ve already written up a referral to a therapist at one of our outside offices, but it would help to know some of the things that might be affecting his wellbeing.” Dean wavers for a moment, a little surprised. Sure, he may have idly thought about finding someone to help Cas, but he wouldn’t even know where to begin. Clearly, Tessa doesn’t have that problem.

“I, um, I don’t know a lot. All he’s told me is that his family wouldn’t ever...physically touch him, when he lived with them, you know? And he was homeless for at least a year.” Dean ignores the way his stomach twists, ignores the persistent voice in the back of his head that’s telling him that he’s betrayed Cas’s trust, that he shouldn’t be telling a stranger these things. Tessa just nods, scribbling something on her clipboard, and when she looks up her smile is still fixed in place, even if it seems a little grimmer now.

“Thank you, Dean. I’ll have someone call and let you know when an appointment is available.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he replies, voice rough. He pushes open the door to the waiting room, and it takes all of his strength to meet Castiel’s eyes, and to extend his arm so that he can regain his hold on Dean’s jacket. “Come on, Cas. Let’s go home.”

Cas doesn’t reply, but his grip tightens just a little more, and he lets Dean lead him out of the room complacently. He has the look in his eye that tells Dean that he’s not really _here_ , the look that says that he’s somewhere far away where Dean’s words barely register. It reminds Dean, a little uneasily, of all his lost hours, days, weeks from his early childhood, from the first few foster homes. He doesn’t like the idea of Cas losing time like this, but he knows that there’s nothing he can do to pull Cas out before he’s ready.

The radio chatters on during the ride back home, about the weather and traffic and politics. Dean doesn’t listen too intently, too focused on the white-caked road and the other cars as Castiel stares out the window. They’re just about to pull into the garage when Castiel jolts, his hand flinging out to grab the steering wheel.

“Wait!” The car jolts to a stop as Dean slams on the breaks, and Castiel practically flings himself out the door. Dean scrambles to unbuckle his seatbelt, and rushes to follow Cas across the lawn and around the corner of his house, to the stretch of snow-covered dirt between the two adjacent houses. “Cas, what are you doing?”

“Shh,” is all that Cas says, slowing to a walk, half bent over. He stills for a moment, seeing something that Dean can’t, and then drops to his knees. Dean finally sees it when Cas leans over, reaching his hand into a hole underneath Dean’s house. It’s shrouded in darkness and Dean wants to yell at Cas to wait, to make sure it isn’t anything dangerous, when Cas pulls out the gray cat he’d brought in from the cold last week.

“What the—” Dean starts to say, but Cas cuts him off again.

“Look.” After depositing the cat safely on the ground, much to her apparent distaste, Castiel reaches into the burrow again and pulls out, to Dean’s surprise, a tiny kitten the same color as its mother. “See?”

Dean stares at him, eyes wide. Castiel’s eyes are alert now, and he cradles to kitten close to his chest, stroking his thumb over the top of its head so, so gently. The sight of him on his knees in the snow, though, makes Dean’s throat constrict as he remembers why the sensation of snow seeping into his pants might not be so foreign to Castiel.

“How many are in there?” He finally manages to ask. Castiel frowns down at the grown cat, and she sits down delicately, as if to say _find out for yourself_. She seems to trust Castiel with her kitten, though, and Dean can’t really blame her. He watches as Castiel gently lifts out three more kittens and cradles them in his arms. One of them mews shrilly in his ear, before trying to claw its way up onto his neck.

“We should take them inside,” Cas murmurs, through the smile splitting his face. Dean doesn’t even think about saying no, not with the way that smile beams up at him. He silently thanks himself for getting allergy medicine after the first time Cas let the cat in the house.

Dean would offer to help him, but Cas looks so content with the kittens in his arms and the mother trailing watchfully after him that he can’t to anything but watch as Castiel disappears through the open garage into the mudroom. Dean drives in the Impala after him, and sheds his layers on the way to where Cas is sitting on the floor again, depositing the kittens one by one into a plastic box he seems to have emptied with some haste. A few odds and ends are in a little pile next to him, things left over from Dean’s move into the house.

“This is...this is okay, right?” Castiel says suddenly, looking up at Dean as if he’s just realized what he’s doing. His hands falter and draw in tight to his chest, empty now, and he drops his gaze after a long moment of silence. And God, if Dean could have said no before this, he wouldn’t be able to now. Cas looks so small, sitting on the floor with his thick jacket discarded next to him, the threadbare t-shirt clinging to his frame obviously years old.

“Yeah,” Dean gets out, his eyes stinging. Must be the cats. “Yeah, Cas, this is good. You did good.”

He sits on the floor next to Castiel, uncomfortable with the idea of standing over him for any longer, and when Cas smiles waveringly and drops a kitten, soft and tiny and fragile, into Dean’s hands, Dean smiles right back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me on tumblr at http://casscaixn.tumblr.com (http://jvstens.co.vu)


End file.
